


laid bare, right there

by Ankal



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alcohol, Also Atsumu Likes Cats Just Let Him Live His Life, Anal Sex, Because I Needed Some Laughter, Bokuto Sex Worker Arc, Drinking, Dubious Consent, Even Tinier Osamei If You Squint Really Hard, Friends With Benefits, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Friends to Lovers, He’s Not A Himbo Bc Marie Said So, I Have A Thing For Stripping Atsumu And WHAT ABOUT IT?, It's Not That Dubious, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor BDSM References, Minor Kagehina If You Listen Through A Wall, Never Have I Ever, Past Stripper!Sakusa Kiyoomi, Team Bonding As A Sex Device, They Both Want it They're Just Idiots, They're In Love Your Honor, VDay Fic But It Does Not Even Include The Word Valentines, What I Mean Is: Friends With Benefits to Lovers, idiots to lovers, this is for em. i love you em
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:34:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29607435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankal/pseuds/Ankal
Summary: 5+1:The five times Sakusa and Atsumu told each other what to do, and the one time it wasn’t necessary.alternatively: an alcohol-oriented, extended-metaphor-adorned piece.“Write the wholesome stripping scene you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, background Bokuaka, background kagehina, osamei if you squint REALLY HARD
Comments: 27
Kudos: 210
Collections: Among Friends Server Valentine's Day Fic Exchange





	laid bare, right there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emso/gifts).



> hello hello! this is my valentine’s day exchange gift for my dearest Emily!! she wanted sfw fluff. if _anyone_ knows me, the first certain thing is that i will make _anything and everything_ nsfw, and the second thing is i live for angst. watch me taking a potentially fluffy plot and adorn it with a little bit of kink. i’m not sure how intense the angst is going to be, but believe me when i said i asked people to put a leash on me so that i didn’t go overboard.
> 
> this is based on her popular fic thread, which I cannot link because her account is deactivated. 
> 
> cw // brief mention of self harm (one sentence). to avoid, stop reading the sentence after “The silence is suffocating. Nervous. Taut.” and skip to the next paragraph! 
> 
> I sincerely hope I can put a smile on her beautiful, sincere face in flickering soft lights. I know I can’t pay back all she’s given to me (even the unnamed and unnoticed, especially the unnamed and unnoticed), but this is an attempt to start.

**fuck me harder. tequila.**

There are two ways to enjoy tequila.

Silver tequila carries almost no flavor of earth – the tequila mash is distilled twice, and the silver tequila makes its grandiose appearance. It is immediately bottled and sealed, sent off to parties where the youth taste the salt from each other’s necks and lick their fingertips after holding the lime. It is enjoyed mostly in shots; it is sharp, it burns, and it’s impulsive. The salt and lime merely give it flavor, since the essence it carries is its root plant, the blue agave. Such a sharp and robust plant, of course, produces a sharp and robust spirit.

Aged tequila, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. It rests for months, up to years, in white oak barrels, where it proclaims the spirit of the wood as its own and greedily sucks it out. It is complex, rich in flavor, and rightfully valuable; therefore, it deserves to be appreciated properly. For this reason, tradition states that it should be sipped slowly from a _copita_ glass; this allows the drink to rest peacefully at its wide bottom, and the complex smells to unite at the narrow top. Aged tequila has a breathtaking hue: a rich, dark, foxy shade of amber.

There are two types of tequila.

One is sharp, silver, and destructive in its speed and strength.

The other is golden, rich, and savory in its length and appreciation.

It takes one night for Kiyoomi to find out that one man manages to contain both.

✵

Kiyoomi hates Miya Atsumu.

No, he seriously does. He hates the way Atsumu doesn’t collect his hair from the showers; he hates the way he can trace where Atsumu walks around in a room – the man leaves a trail of litter behind him. He hates the way Atsumu talks to Kiyoomi with his mouth open while he eats. He hates the fact that the man either wears too much or not enough deodorant.

He hates the fact that despite all of this, he cannot stop looking at him.

Miya Atsumu is chaotic. He punches Bokuto in the shoulder when his spikes are on point and laughs at the bruises afterwards, but he often scurries away from the group walking to their cars because he saw a cat and must pet it. He is so opinionated that Kiyoomi once hears him bitching about the quality of metal lids on canned goods – it is a tirade that starts from one brand in particular, then extends to cover the whole of Japan, suddenly becoming something socio-economic. Atsumu hates jeans with tight, small pockets, and he doesn’t even notice the way the whole team is staring at how they clad his thighs just right while he struggles to shove his phone into a pocket. He curses at people who throw food away. When he gets angry just because someone is stupid, his mouth falls into a flat line and he squints. When he gets angry because something makes him sad, his mouth quirks up just a bit to the right, and he juts his chin out a little, his brows furrowing just so that they shadow the golden starlight in his eyes.

Kiyoomi, more often than once, watches him pick a fight with someone at a bar because Atsumu doesn’t like the way they were looking at one of his teammates. Kiyoomi finds himself, more often than not, protecting Atsumu from blows and steering them away from a situation bound to escalate, sighing internally throughout the whole process. (He doesn’t know whether the sighs are directed towards Atsumu’s stupidity or his own inability to not act whenever Atsumu creates trouble.) It takes one unfortunate encounter to learn that while Atsumu is all fire and passion, he doesn’t know how to punch someone to save his life when he’s drunk. Kiyoomi scowls every single time they reach the fresh, freezing night air afterwards where Atsumu laughs, unhinged and free, but the sound is a melody – one that allows him to chance a look at the gleeful and childish man walking in zig-zags.

Atsumu lives life on fire, giving everything all of himself and then some more. It seems like the only way he knows how to do it: he is impulsive – Kiyoomi thinks it would burn the throat with its intensity if someone kissed him, although he shakes the thought away with a flicker of his head whenever it arises. Atsumu is fast; it takes one look at something for him to announce that he either hates it with his guts or will protect it forever, and Kiyoomi never understands how he decides on his stance so surely. He is messy, just like his favorite alcoholic drink dripping down his chin when he throws it back, already drunk but still hungry for the taste of lime between his nimble fingers and the salt he licks from the back of his own hand. Kiyoomi knows he should be disgusted by the view, but how Atsumu glitters in whatever he does entrances him, even if it’s slamming back tequila shots.

He is Atsumu, on fire and in love with life. Every second of it, too. This underscores the haunting void at the center of Kiyoomi, and he imagines there is a big campfire in all colors lilac and orange burning in the center of Atsumu. It’s like watching a piece of art burn with the onslaught of flames – looking at him.

But Kiyoomi cannot keep his eyes away. Not even for a second.

✵

Despite the fact that Kiyoomi keeps watching, or maybe because there is never a predictable moment with Miya Atsumu, he doesn’t see it coming. He doesn’t see it coming because he’s shared a room with Atsumu before, and if he keeps his mouth shut and talks only when necessary, he knows for a fact that Atsumu will just stir trouble for himself only. He hasn’t thought this would be any different.

It’s the Olympics season. The weather of June in Tokyo is just slightly warm; it’s not overwhelmingly hot yet, nor is it cold. Kiyoomi and Atsumu are arranged to room together – because even when randomly picked, all odds tend to be stacked against Kiyoomi – and their hotel room has a port view; if he squints, Kiyoomi can see slight details of the enormous ships sailing by. He sighs tiredly as he puts down his bag on one double bed – thankfully, the Olympic committee clearly has not held back from expenses.

They have arrived in the evening; it is nearing six. Atsumu never wastes time with his plans, so he’s out to enjoy a club somewhere alongside other Olympic teammates before they’re even properly settled.

Well, all Kiyoomi is planning to do is to wind down, take a shower, read a little, and go to sleep.

He’s nearly successful at it actually, until he’s finally settled in bed – Atsumu returns with scrambled footsteps, just a faint trail of tequila following him, pairing up with iodine that wafts through the ocean-wet summer air when he opens the window. He then throws his duffel bag onto the floor and flops onto the bed with a groan.

Kiyoomi, for one second, wonders if Atsumu carried the bag to the club, but deciding against speaking, he returns to his book. Atsumu seems like he’s about to doze off anyway, and Kiyoomi knows from too much experience that he never makes sense when he’s sleepy.

That’s when they hear it.

The loud slam of a door, a bit muffled, and then something hitting the wall and heavy breathing mingled with moans. Kiyoomi looks incredulously at the wall across from him, wondering if he imagined what he just heard, but meets the honeyed golden gaze when he turns his head to ask Atsumu. The eye contact is tense, and after another high pitched moan that can belong to none other than Hinata Shoyo, horrified.

Atsumu lifts himself up on his elbows, possibly trying to figure out what’s going on, all sleep leaving him in an instant.

It needs no further aid because in one second, they both hear an obvious, familiar voice skewed towards a shrill, one they know too well from months of practice. “Shoyo, please - _please-”_

Atsumu’s mouth opens, gaping at the whine they just heard from the one and only _Kageyama Tobio,_ and his eyebrows rise in disbelief. Kiyoomi bites the inside of his cheek.

Okay, so the committee apparently did hold back a little.

A few heavy seconds pass with shuffling and some thick thud against the wall again next door, and then they hear another loud moan. It’s breathy and crooked, and Kiyoomi can feel his insides heating up at the pure desperacy of the following sentence, the hunger for more, the too familiar _need. “There,_ Tobio, right there-”

“Oh my god,” Atsumu whispers in terror. “Omi, what do we do?”

“Wait for it to pass, clearly,” Kiyoomi whispers back, trying to snap back into reality and to keep his voice even. “We have initial matches tomorrow. It won’t last long.”

✵

It lasts long. _Very_ long.

So long that after an hour Atsumu is groaning on his own bed, still dressed for a night out, with pillows as earmuffs around his head to not hear the octaves Kageyama’s reaching in the other room. Whether Atsumu can breathe is doubtful, but from the sounds of it, he doesn’t want to be alive, really.

Kiyoomi has long stopped pretending to be able to read. He stares at the wall ahead of him with frustration, and closes the book with a thick thud. They do not whisper anymore, since it’s evident that the thoughts of others are the least of the happy couple’s concerns.

“What if we knocked on their door and-”

“They’d ignore ya.” Atsumu’s voice comes from deep below. “Like ya don’t know that.”

Kiyoomi huffs with exasperation, pressing his thumb and forefinger on either side of his temples. “Do you have a better idea?”

“I, in fact, do,” Atsumu replies, his voice suddenly no longer muffled. Kiyoomi looks up to see him sitting upright on the bed, set free of his self-made pillow prison.

Oh no.

Kiyoomi knows this look. He knows that glint in Atsumu’s eye, and it has not yet failed to be a telltale sign of Bad News. He’s seen that look right before Atsumu decided to drink Coca-Cola after swallowing down several Mentos candies, ending with him vomiting profusely. He’s seen that look right before Atsumu told him he can climb from one balcony to another to prank Bokuto, which ended up with him nearly breaking his leg when he fell from the second floor onto the grass. He’s seen that look too many times.

Sakusa Kiyoomi _knows_ trouble when he sees it, and Miya Atsumu is possibly the easiest human on the planet to embody the abstract concept of mischief.

Despite all of this, Kiyoomi’s ideal bedtime has already passed, he is tired of traveling, and he needs his fucking sleep before the matches start tomorrow.

So, he stays silent.

He should have seen it coming, to be honest. He wonders, later, if it was in front of him all along, or if there was another reason he didn’t see this coming despite committing Atsumu’s telltale signs to his memory.

Atsumu tilts his head, and adds a lopsided grin to the scene of stirring trouble, as if the way his eyes shine is not enough. Kiyoomi feels the fear that regardless of the outcome, he won’t be able to say no. “Omi-omi, haveya heard of fightin’ fire with fire?”

Kiyoomi frowns, ready to snap any second if Atsumu elaborates this with something stupid, which accounts for roughly 95% of anything Atsumu says in general. And that is _not_ including his sleep-talk, which Kiyoomi knows too well from too many bus rides and unfortunate rooming arrangements – how Atsumu whines and groans in his sleep occupies a disturbing amount of space in his memory.

Atsumu, on the other hand, takes one last look at him, stands in front of the wall and lets out an unmistakably lewd, incredibly loud, pleasured moan.

Kiyoomi’s brain screeches to a halt.

 _What,_ he thinks in ragged breaths, _did you just do?_

Atsumu answers his incredulous stare with something a little like mirth and a lot like trouble. That glint again.

Yet, in the silence that follows, Kiyoomi suddenly realizes that the voices from next door have stopped. Atsumu flashes him a grin, knowing and victorious, and tilts his head, looking at Kiyoomi with some funny, merciless intensity. “Oh, _fuck,_ Omi-kun, do that again.”

Holy _shit._

This cannot be happening.

He whispers furiously when he finds words again. “What the fuck are you doing?”

His fingers curl around his bedsheets, knuckles white, while all the blood in his body decides to paint his cheeks and neck a furious red.

Atsumu lets out a whine, dragged and so _real_ that Kiyoomi knows he will be haunted by this. He can feel it scarring his memory already and chaotic thoughts clashing with one another.

Oh god.

“Miya! Shut up!”

“Ugh, I can’t be quiet if ya keep doin’ that,” Atsumu groans.

Kiyoomi feels that if spontaneous human combustion was a thing, this would be the moment for it. His entire being is ignited, and his fingers tingle with the need to grab something, bruise someone, or punch a wall.

 _What_ is happening?

And how can he squish down the internal, upward stirring that brings him to the edge of his seat?

Atsumu’s stupidity is beyond words at this point, but it’s _working._ The noise has stopped, a stunned silence. Atsumu gestures impatiently, seemingly asking him to cooperate, and Kiyoomi takes one look at the wall, then back at Atsumu’s amber eyes. After one second of comparing pros and cons, he squeezes his eyes shut, and lets go of an embarrassed, broken sound that vibrates at the back of his throat.

He hears Atsumu gasp.

When he opens his eyes, Atsumu’s right brow is raised and his lower lip is glistening under the vicious teeth holding it back. Kiyoomi raises his eyes to Atsumu’s. Time freezes, and Atsumu moans, looking at Kiyoomi deep in the eye, much louder and much more convincing than Kiyoomi. He suddenly feels breathless. All the air in the room rushes out of the window.

Their eye contact breaks at some fervent discussion suddenly starting next door. They cannot make out the words, but Hinata’s high pitched exclamations are easy to distinguish. Atsumu takes his eyes away from the wall, back again at Kiyoomi – who never stopped looking at Atsumu, because how could he – and he takes one step closer to his bed. His voice is loud, but purring nonetheless. “I’ve wanted to do this for _so_ long, Omi-kun.”

Kiyoomi’s stomach is aflame. His chest is tight, his fingers are cold, and the air he’s inhaling isn’t reaching his lungs properly. The frankly inappropriate and offensively intense way Atsumu’s looking at him stirs something deep in his gut. He can’t tear his eyes away from the deep, golden amber, as if he ever was able to – he wants to ask what is happening, if he is hallucinating – what is different, _what is happening?_

Can this be a dream?

Maybe he’s asleep already, and he’s dreaming.

Atsumu waves his hands, snapping him out of his thoughts, and mouths to him, _“Fuckin’ say somethin’!”_

He hears himself speak against his own will, in the silence that feels unholy to disrupt.

“Me too...” A pause, a drop in his stomach. Then he speaks louder, tilting his head. “...Atsumu.”

Atsumu’s intense gaze does not waver while he raises a brow, as if mocking the lack of conviction in Kiyoomi’s tone, but the sound as it is seems to work nonetheless. They both hear Hinata gasping dramatically next door, but the room feels tight despite the high ceilings and suffocating despite the wide open window. It becomes even hotter when Atsumu takes one step closer to the bed, not at all distracted by Hinata.

“Yeah?” he says hoarsely, standing in front of Kiyoomi. Kiyoomi looks up to him, cornered and on fire. Atsumu bends over until their faces are centimeters away. “Prove it, then. Fuck me like ya really _mean_ it.”

And he reaches out, tangling his fingers into Kiyoomi’s hair, and tugs sharply.

If nothing convinces the couple next door, the pained and desperate grunt it draws out of Kiyoomi does it. Atsumu smiles, lopsided, dangerous. Predatory. “That’s more like it, Omi-kun,” he whispers.

Kiyoomi swallows. Hard. 

And in a second he no longer has the coherence to think at all, because Atsumu kisses him.

He _kisses_ him.

Something breaks.

This must be a fever dream. That works. This must be a fever dream, because in the last two years Kiyoomi has been watching Atsumu, wondering every so often how fierce his desire would feel, wondering what sounds he would make if someone fisted a hand in his hair, he never thought it was actually possible to know first-hand.

Suddenly Kiyoomi is trying to remember how to function. He’s drawing blanks, too many thoughts crowding his head, the haze too intense to see through it. His mind is belatedly catching up to the action, the gears slowly making sense of the man in front of him. Atsumu’s lips feel warm, like pressing his lips to a flame, and Kiyoomi grounds himself through the feeling, doesn’t let himself think of the consequence or implication, doesn’t let doubt cloud his primal desire, and he moves his lips against Atsumu’s. He latches onto how Atsumu’s lips taste like expensive liquor, some lime mixed aside, and he becomes painfully aware of the grain of salt that is left at the corner of Atsumu’s lips when he licks it. The violent urge to taste tequila straight off Atsumu’s mouth surges through him, and his body reaches out and knots its fingers in Atsumu’s bleached hair, neck bending to kiss him deeper.

Kiyoomi is living reality in flashes: a blur when Atsumu kisses him slowly, another where he bites his lower lip, another where he takes sips of Atsumu in an otherwise fervent, needy kiss. He tastes a dark, amber colored syrup on his lips: wet, soft and hungry.

In one smooth motion Atsumu straddles him, button-down and jeans still on, the light smell of tequila surrounding him – a very convincing, sensory dream. He leans in, lips never disconnecting, and kisses Kiyoomi like the air in the room resides in his lips.

It feels _right,_ and somehow Kiyoomi had feared it would be.

The thought of Hinata and Kageyama next door has flown away with the blazing points of contact; there’s no room left for thoughts or judgement when all Kiyoomi can see, feel and breathe is Atsumu. He can’t help but moan into the kiss, breaths ragged and scattered, hands wandering around the columns of their necks, sneaking under Kiyoomi’s loose t-shirt, curling into the belt loops of Atsumu’s jeans. He feels muscles flexing and relaxing under his touch.

He feels something else, too.

Despite the hot room and the warm ocean air, despite their teammates next door, despite Atsumu kissing him… Kiyoomi can feel it deep down, stirring, shuffling things, knocking stuff over. He can feel the change.

He can sense that he is on a threshold, like he won’t be able to go back once he steps forward.

But as the dooming catastrophe engulfs him, he lets go, allowing himself to be sucked deep into Atsumu’s heated lips, his calloused hands, the grazing, impatient teeth, the greedy and bruising pressing of fingertips onto skin. He allows himself to be kissed thoroughly until he can feel his lips are swollen, he allows his mouth to be fucked so hard that tears stream down his face, he allows his body to be flipped over like a ragdoll, he _allows_ Atsumu to not take his time and impatiently enter him.

He allows a broken, crooked, pained moan. Atsumu bites his neck from behind, thrusting into him.

Kiyoomi finds himself growling, his cheeks still wet with trickles, and misses the pain as soon as his body adjusts to Atsumu. He doesn’t feel as much now, and he cannot let the dream end. He needs to feel more, no matter what it is. Especially if it’s _this._

“Atsumu,” he breathes out, and hears Atsumu moan in reply. It’s impulsive and savory at the same time – sharp and golden, rich and destructive. Kiyoomi doesn’t know how this is possible, but he _knows_ he needs _more._

“Atsumu,” he repeats, and swallows, his voice coming out strangled with forceful thrusts. “Fuck me harder.”

Atsumu doesn’t need to be told twice.

✵

When sunlight spills through sheer curtains, Atsumu wakes up to a weight on him. He opens his eyes to messy, black curls splayed on his chest, long pale limbs entangled with his own, two strong arms encircling his waist. He freezes when he notices he’s hugging Kiyoomi with both his arms in return, his barely-awake brain trying desperately to form a coherent thought. He finally reaches over to Kiyoomi’s phone on the nightstand, looking at the time, and sighs in relief when he sees that they still have one hour before breakfast.

Kiyoomi stirs on his chest when he turns back to hug him (because why not), suddenly raising his head and head-butting Atsumu’s chin. Atsumu lets a pained groan out, and the sound seems to jolt Kiyoomi awake as he sits upright, staring at Atsumu with horror in his eyes.

Atsumu looks back at him while rubbing his chin, then lets a relaxed and playful smile on his face and hooks his fingers together under his head. “Mornin’, Omi.”

“Don’t say a word,” Kiyoomi hisses, almost spitting venom. Atsumu hums, an amused glint in his eyes as Kiyoomi drags a hand across his face. They make eye contact for a mere second, Kiyoomi continuing to survey the situation in front of him. He stares dejectedly at Atsumu's tangled hair, bare chest, and comfortable smirk. It's like watching someone get a math problem correct, piecing two and two together, although the success significantly lacks triumph when Kiyoomi raises his eyes to him again. “This never happened.”

Atsumu raises a brow, his mouth quirking up into a lopsided grin. “Uh-huh. Explain that to Shoyo and Tobio yerself.”

“God,” Kiyoomi groans, raising one hand to press on his temples. Atsumu wonders if this was crossing a line or if Kiyoomi is genuinely uncomfortable. Insecurity tugs at his shoulders, and he offers relief to pacify both parties the only way he knows how.

“Jeez, it was just sex, Omi,” he states, raising a brow when Kiyoomi looks at him. “Ain’t nobody gonna judge you for that.”

Kiyoomi’s mouth falls into a flat line. “This was a one-time thing.”

“Whatever ya say,” Atsumu says, stretching his lower back and triceps, yawning. “We have breakfast in an hour. If ya wanna shower first, do that.”

Kiyoomi looks at him, possibly considering his chances of dying if he leaps out the window, then turns to the end of the bed with a sigh. He opens his luggage, completely naked, and Atsumu unashamedly watches his defined back muscles flex as he rummages through to find his necessities. Then he turns to ask Atsumu something, but the question dies on his lips.

“Are you watching me?”

“Can’t blame me, it’s a great view,” Atsumu states with a grin.

Kiyoomi bites his bottom lip like he’s considering the window again, blinking at Atsumu repeatedly with an offended and disbelieving expression. He opens his mouth to say something, then blinks deeply, swallowing the words and shutting his mouth. He looks at Atsumu like he wishes eyes could kill, and he murmurs while slowly shaking his head. “This cannot be real.”

Then he walks to the bathroom, and Atsumu turns over to get his phone with a grin when he hears the water running.

✵

Kiyoomi realizes it’s no longer a fever dream when they enter the breakfast lounge together, Hinata’s exclamations audible from where the Olympic team sits. The table falls silent as soon as Bokuto sees them and nods in their direction.

It’s definitely no longer a fever dream when Hoshiumi bursts out in laughter, Suna and Aran giggling quietly, and Bokuto stands up – so fast that the chair almost falls down – to slam Atsumu’s back. Kageyama looks like he is not here, staring deeply at the secret of life hidden in the eggs on his plate, ears aflame.

It’s reality, cold and sharp, when Hinata practically screams, “Sakusa-san – Atsumu-san – I can’t believe I didn’t know you guys were together?!”

Kiyoomi opens his mouth but Atsumu beats him to it, grinning. “Sorry, Shoyo-kun, did we distract ya from somethin’?”

Bokuto howls with laughter while Aran snickers into his palm, Suna’s knife-sharp lined eyes darting from Kiyoomi to Atsumu while he tries to suppress a devilish grin. Kiyoomi quietly looks at Wakatoshi. Wakatoshi looks back, stoic, unbothered, and his eyes dart down to the soft collar of Kiyoomi’s t-shirt, and his lips curl into a small smile. “Congratulations.”

Kiyoomi looks down to see the splotchy purple and red mark from last night on his collarbone, another regret he glimpsed in the shower. His breath leaves his body in a sharp exhale, and he pulls down the back of his shirt hem to cover it up. The bruise is the size of fucking Japan, because Miya Atsumu gives everything and more – of course he does – and why would this be any different?

“Nothing happened,” Kiyoomi starts, his composure threatening to break. He gives up quickly when Aran giggles alongside Hinata, sighs, and walks away from the table to get a drink for himself. He needs more coffee to deal with this.

“It was a one time thing,” he murmurs to himself, so weak it’s barely audible.

He’s not sure who he is trying to convince.

✵

It is clearly not a one time thing.

That is clear at the first moment they’re left alone, as soon as they’re back in the room after successfully crushing Latvia and Croatia. Atsumu slams the door behind him, and turns Kiyoomi’s exhausted body with such fervor that Kiyoomi loses his whereabouts for a second. The next moment he’s thrown onto the bed, being kissed out of his mind. They are both tired, and Kiyoomi feels the need to shower again despite doing so in the facility already – though it would be in vain to deny his blood hissing in his veins at the soft gasps falling from Atsumu’s mouth or how hungrily he licks and bites Kiyoomi’s bottom lip. Despite the steam, he pulls back as soon as he feels Kiyoomi’s reluctance in kissing him back.

“Is everythin’ okay?” he asks in a husky voice, and Kiyoomi tries to not let electric zap within him, pooling at his groin at hearing his voice like that. He swallows, looking at Atsumu without a reply.

Atsumu removes himself immediately, sitting on his heels although raising a brow. “Omi, ya okay?”

“I… am,” Kiyoomi replies, although he cannot explain it further. He lets out a frustrated sigh, betraying his instincts with his words. “Last time was a one-time thing.”

“Does it matter as long as we have _fun?”_ Atsumu asks, eyes glittering with that mischief again. He leans in, though still not touching Kiyoomi. “Ya wanna do this?”

It is unfair. It is unfair of Atsumu to ask this while his lips are centimeters away from Kiyoomi’s, when Kiyoomi knows how it feels to be squeezed by those strong hands and slapped by those wide palms. It is unfair, and Kiyoomi can’t fight it.

“Yes.”

Atsumu doesn’t need to be told twice.

**kiss me more. white wine.**

It can be argued that all wines are the same: pressed and fermented grapes. But if that is what matters, then all human beings are the same too, and that simply doesn’t work.

So, here’s another take: all wines are unique, but there are two main types. One is red wine; it is rooted deep in history, and it’s the first to appear on the stage. It’s a greedy, hungry drink; it uses everything it can – the skins and seeds of the grapes, the buttery, nutty aroma of oak barrels. It’s a mixing pot of many things, but the proud end product is rich and velvety.

The belated, second one is white wine, differing from red in one major point: the skins or the seeds are not included in the process. White wine takes pride in the fact that it is solely made from the flesh of grapes, not scarred by the color of the skin or the taste of the seeds. It prefers to preserve its fruity and floral aromas, and zesty flavor. For this reason, it is kept in stainless steel vats, away from germs or inhaling the air directly, whereas red wine throws itself into the world, determined to take in everything it has to offer.

White wine is refreshing, especially paired with ice. It is really what you prefer to do with it: it can end up dry and sharp, or you can taste a fruit basket in one sip, the spring on your tongue. It’s clear, and rumored to be an easier drink than red wine. The reality is that it can be easy and low-quality, but it can also be magnificent and life-changing, making you try to cling to the memory of how it tasted.

The flirtiness and the velvety texture of red wine make it a popular choice, but white wine holds and offers something different, something much quieter. It’s a break from the ceaseless rhythm, with some ice to cool off the explosion of color and flavor that belongs to vineyards of early, dust pink spring; it’s some fresh air with lemons melting on your tongue. It might even look empty at first glance, devoid of flavor just because it’s lighter in color. But anyone who has tasted good white wine, one that carries its pride high and its aroma hidden deep, knows that this is a fool’s thought.

Atsumu starts to think that he, apparently, is a fool for not noticing this before.

✵

Atsumu returns to Hyogo immediately after the Olympics to enjoy the summer with his Ma and Osamu. Which actually translates to this: he fucks around a lot, not returning home on many nights, but is present for when his mom needs help with the redecoration of the house or when Osamu wants to go out together on his day off. Honestly, it feels good to be back home, to walk around streets he knows like the palm of his hand. The people are familiar too. It’s good, it’s fun, and Atsumu can definitely say he’s having a grand old time.

Except for the fact that he cannot let go of a pair of dark, dark eyes looking up at him, contrasting sharply with the pristine white bed sheets beneath them.

Well, yeah. Omi has pretty eyes and a gorgeous ass, for that matter. Atsumu has his own suspicions that the man puts in extra work for his biceps because... that shouldn’t be allowed. It’s not even _logical_ for Omi to be so defined or to have such strong arms since they give out so easily when Atsumu pins him to bed.

 _Anyway,_ it doesn’t hit right when he’s fucking people who he already knows – old and convenient flings. Their reactions he already knows as well; it’s nothing new, there is nothing to explore, and Atsumu grows bored _really_ quickly. His mind scatters with the thoughts of seeing someone so taciturn and reserved outside go absolutely apeshit in bed, even while he’s pulling groans out of familiar lips in the bedrooms he used to sneak into and out of when he was in high school.

What can he say? Atsumu likes himself a little contrast and some new toys.

He also finds himself bored with no volleyball to play and nobody to annoy. It's fun to help Ma pick colors and carry the furniture, and it’s certainly something he missed deeply to come home and crash on the couch next to Osamu to bicker about their days, but Atsumu feels... antsy.

So, he welcomes it with open arms when the season begins again, almost running all the way from Hyogo to Osaka. He cleans his house with excitement for a new year’s beginning and settles down with a backache two days before the first practice.

He fiddles with his phone, fighting a persistent tug at his gut as he tries to place the nagging feeling of want still skittering anxiously across his bones. He’s back in Osaka now. He’s got everything he needs, honestly, settled in the quiet of his home. The thrill is awaiting him with the thunderous, repetitive slams of volleyballs against the floor.

He throws his legs onto the sofa with a bowl of sukiyaki, ready to dig in, but can’t shake the feeling that something is gnawing at _him_.

✵

He understands what has been missing as soon as his eyes meet Kiyoomi’s in the locker room – it’s bullying someone who is not Osamu. He lets out an obnoxious laugh, opens his arms with his duffel bag dangling from one shoulder, and yells, “Omi-kun! Haven’t changed a bit!”

“You’re talking like we’ve been apart for years, Miya.”

Hearing his voice is like calm balm on a scratching wound. Atsumu ignores that.

“Canya tell me every second ya didn’t see me didn’t feel like years?”

Kiyoomi sighs in annoyance.

Atsumu points one finger at him, grinning threateningly. “See, ya can’t say it!”

“You should learn about the concept of ‘argument from ignorance’.”

“Sure, Omi-kun,” Atsumu brushes past him. His mouth is dry, he now notices, and distantly wonders where all the water he drank today went. He forces a swallow down his throat, and tries to huff the words out airly, not giving away how the slight brush of skin is suddenly drying him up with heat. “Don't need college or fancy words to read people, y’know.”

“Then it’s great luck that you haven’t attempted higher education,” Kiyoomi says flatly. “Would be a waste of time.”

Atsumu opens his mouth to retort, but Hinata and Bokuto enter amidst a loud discussion, and a sun-kissed Hinata leaps forward to hug Atsumu. He greets them, completely distracted, and mentions Bokuto’s new undercut. “Ya jealous of me, Bokkun?”

“It was Akaashi’s idea!” Bokuto replies with his usual rumbling, sunshine-in-a-body attitude. “Tsum-Tsum, we’re twins now!”

“Osamu-san will be jealous,” Hinata whispers dramatically.

“Nah, he’ll be glad someone took the burden off of’im,” Atsumu laughs. “Why don’t we dye the undercut purple, Bokkun?”

With the welcome distraction of his boisterous teammates, Atsumu almost convinces himself that it was the loud camaraderie of his friends that he’s missed, and not the cool dark gaze of the one teammate that isn’t quite a friend but isn’t quite not-a-friend.

✵

Practice is fun. God, Atsumu has missed this. He’s missed his muscles sizzling from all the exertion. He missed feeling spent and tired. All that pent up energy must have bugged him, he figures.

About two weeks in, he notices that while practice does help him relax and calm down and maybe go to bed earlier, it stops there. The training sessions definitely don’t help with jacking off multiple times before he can actually fall asleep, moaning with his forehead on the cool shower tiles, thinking of pretty, stupid dark lips and an annoyingly deep pair of black eyes.

Alright. This is becoming an issue.

It should be easy to solve, though – all he has to do is ask Kiyoomi if he’s available sometime next week, and hook up with him. No big deal.

Except that it is a fucking big deal because Kiyoomi looks at him like nothing ever happened between them. An even worse possibility is that Kiyoomi is disgusted at the mere memory of what happened. It annoys Atsumu, but it also excites him because, regardless of the outcome, this is a game of chase. 

And Atsumu is _great_ at games.

And on a Tuesday evening, he comes up with a Bright Idea. He excitedly texts first Coach Foster – because he needs support from him if this is going to happen – and then spams the group chat with multiple, revolting typos and an obnoxious amount of emojis. There. Everybody is invited over to Atsumu’s place next Saturday for drinks and fun. Kiyoomi will be nudged by Coach, as a team bonding practice.

Atsumu smirks. Nothing like putting the expectations of a parent on the shoulders of someone you can’t bully enough by yourself. The lengths Atsumu can go for a good night of sex is vast, but he pats himself on the back with a grin, knowing his teammates will be none the wiser under the guise of team bonding.

Two birds in one stone.

✵

Bokuto rings the door first, with multiple bottles of wine and cans of beer in the bags he and Hinata are holding.

“Bokkun, ya know ya could’ve just let yerself in-”

“It’s a party, Tsum-Tsum!! It would be rude to let myself in,” Bokuto interjects, although grinning. “I still have my keys, though, in case you need anything.”

“I have my keys too but I need Akaashi-kun gone if I wanna visit and not lose my goddamn mind,” Atsumu groans, remembering the last time he went (unannounced) to have dinner (read: steal some snacks) at Bokuto’s place and opening the door to the couple in a… compromising situation. On the dinner table.

With whipped cream all over both of them.

Bokuto laughs, nudging Hinata to come in as well, and takes the bags from him. They move to the kitchen together, setting up the drinks, and Hinata takes it upon himself to put the snacks into the bowls.

They catch up, cups in hand, about their most recent break. Small-talk, a supplement until the rest arrive.

Atsumu can’t help but check the time on his phone what feels like every two seconds. Each time someone comes through the door, he finds himself being disappointed for a beat, then regains his composure. From five minutes late, to ten minutes late. The team is nearly all here and if Kiyoomi doesn’t get his ass here in the next thirty seconds, Atsumu will call him and –

“Omi-san!” Hinata yells at the door, and Atsumu feels his heart skipping a beat. Then two.

Alright. He should breathe.

It’s not very clear to him, why he’s so nervous about this, but a man has his needs and Atsumu blames Kiyoomi. It’s Kiyoomi’s fault for being so fucking hot with a voice of smoky embers and Atsumu will _not_ be held responsible for that. He puts on a convincing smile, and walks towards the door where Hinata is excitedly taking a plastic bag from Kiyoomi’s hands.

“Thought ya wouldn’t make it, Omi-kun!” he greets him, arms opened wide, looking at Kiyoomi in black slacks, black button-down, black mask. Atsumu silently wonders if his underwear is also black. Maybe he’ll find out soon. His mouth goes dry. Again.

He swallows the anxious chuckle down his throat, and takes a deep inhale, looking at the ceiling. Get a grip. Get. A. Grip.

When he lowers his eyes again, Kiyoomi is looking at him directly.

Atsumu grins as a reflex. Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. Probably as a reflex.

✵

Atsumu cannot get Kiyoomi’s attention, and he’s about to call for desperate measures.

He’s not sure if it’s on him, or if the man himself is just trying to disappear into thin air. He’s casually sipping some iced white wine and watches the quiz show on TV despite all the hollering and laughing going on around him. Atsumu decides it’s time.

“Y’all,” he stands in the middle of the living room, raising his beer can to his teammates scattered around on armchairs and some on the floor, ignoring the anticipation and excitement in his own voice. “Time for _Never Have I Ever.”_

“Finally, a game!” Inunaki exclaims, jumping onto his feet from where he’s sitting in one athletic motion. “Let’s go!!”

Bokuto laughs, slinging one arm around Meian’s shoulders. “Someone’s about to get wrecked.”

“Bokuto, if you talk about that night-”

“What night?” Hinata exclaims, putting his feet down from the coffee table.

“The Olympics night,” Bokuto replies easily, his grin so wide that his face hardly contains it. “The night when your fun was all of our suffering.”

Hinata’s tipsy blush turns into something angrier and crawls from his neck to his ears. “We didn’t _know_ the walls were that thin!”

“Anyway,” Bokuto interrupts him, chuckling. “It’s fine. What is _not_ fine is how Meian dealt with it, hm? And he wasn’t even on the Olympics team. He was just in our room for a visit.”

Meian stands to get away from him, only to be grabbed by Atsumu. Atsumu flashes him a grin, glad to be able to corner his stern captain, who might or might not have a crush on _goddamn_ Osamu, which makes it all more fun. “Onto the carpet. We’re about to learn.”

Meian groans, but Inunaki and Tomas quickly pull him down to where they already sprawled out on the floor. Hinata scrambles to his feet to grab shot glasses, and Atsumu walks over and bends over the couch, speaking directly into Kiyoomi’s ear. “Not gonna play, Omi-omi?”

“No, thank you,” Kiyoomi replies, eyes fixated on the screen, but his body bends away from Atsumu’s proximity. “I would rather not lose my respect for my teammates.”

“As if ya have any left,” Atsumu speaks in a husky voice, and watches a shiver go down Kiyoomi’s spine just before the man manages to suppress it. He smirks. “C’mon, Omi-kun. Or I’ll hafta explain to Coach why ya weren’t _bonding.”_

Kiyoomi turns his head with a sharp motion, the cracking in his neck joints audible. Dark, dark eyes stare at Atsumu, annoyed, while the stupid, pretty mouth is pressed into a flat line. “It’s exact behavior fitting your mental age, whining to the authorities to get what you want.”

“I’m a man of desire,” Atsumu replies easily, not flinching away from the eye contact, or the dangerous proximity of Kiyoomi’s lips, or the way Kiyoomi’s citrusy breath puffs onto his own face. His eyes dart from his eyes to his mouth, and then he looks back again into the deep darkness. “Don’t be a buzzkill. C’mon.”

Then he lifts himself from the sofa, turns around, and settles on the carpet. With a sigh and the clanking of the wine glass against his coffee table, a few seconds later Kiyoomi sits down on his diagonal. Bokuto shuffles to give him some space without any physical contact. Kiyoomi nods at him thankfully.

✵

“Never have I ever gone skinny dipping while drunk,” Hinata drawls out, already beyond tipsy.

Bokuto and Atsumu share a glance, and with a mutual sigh, they throw back their shots.

Inunaki’s eyes dart between them. “What the fuck?”

“Ask yer question if ya have the right to,” Atsumu replies while trying to suppress a laugh, but Bokuto doesn’t hold back.

“One night, we went out for drinks with Tsum-Tsum,” he starts, and Atsumu groans loudly.

“Long story short, we found ourselves butt-ass naked on the beach in the morning,” Atsumu concludes quickly, trying to cut their embarrassment to a minimum. Bokuto smirks. Atsumu shoots him a look while Hinata giggles wildly.

“Never have I ever,” Tomas starts thankfully, pausing to think. “Sent a nude to a truly wrong person.”

Unexpectedly Hinata and Bokuto raise their glasses simultaneously while Barnes motions them to wait while he fills his own. The three throw back their shots, and Hinata meets his eyes when Atsumu doesn’t stop staring.

“Oikawa-san was the last person I texted in Rio!” he squeaks. “It was a mistake!!”

“Which gives me the idea,” Meian starts before Atsumu can make fun of Hinata, “Never have I ever had a crush on my setter.”

“That is _not_ fair,” Bokuto sneers and Atsumu throws his head back to let booming laughter loose, wanting to ask if that would be the case if Osamu was a setter, and he hears Hinata supporting Bokuto wholeheartedly. “Setters are pretty! Why are we blamed?”

“Thanks, Shoyo,” Atsumu manages out between his giggles. His laughter is cut dead in the middle when he sees Kiyoomi reach for his shot glass.

“Omi-kun?” he says with disbelief, his stomach stirring with something anxious and excited, but Kiyoomi only shoots him a look before he drinks the liquor with utmost calmness.

The team goes crazy. Bokuto’s voice cracks at _“Who_ was it!?” and Hinata points his finger at Kiyoomi to yell. “See! That only proves our point further!”

Inunaki elbows Kiyoomi on his ribs, and Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “No further explanation.”

“Omi-kun, that’s ruining this entire experience!” Bokuto objects with affirmative nods from Tomas and Meian. “You gotta tell!”

“That’s not in the rules,” Kiyoomi replies calmly. “Proceed, please.”

“Ugh,” Hinata says dramatically. “Guys, how many teams has he been in?”

“I think three,” Tomas replies. “Itachiyama, his college team, and now us.”

“Alright, hold on,” Barnes says, distracted, whipping out his phone. “I’ll give the names.”

“I am right here, I hope you’re aware,” Kiyoomi says.

“It makes no difference,” Meian replies in the tone he uses after defeats, as if not to hurt him more with the inevitable, irreversible result. “You’re of no use when it comes to information about you.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes again. Atsumu has to take his stunned gaze away from him when Barnes exclaims, turning to him with anticipation still stirring and boiling in his stomach. “Here! Okay, Itachiyama, Iizuna Tsukasa. His college team… huh… wait….”

“I won’t tell you,” Kiyoomi informs them resolutely. Everybody ignores him.

“Okay, I’ll find out, and then we’ll figure it out,” Barnes announces. “Continue the game.”

“Okay,” Atsumu murmurs, quietly watching the whole ordeal. He tries to stop drilling holes into Kiyoomi’s head, the way he’s done since the man took the shot. Kiyoomi refuses to meet his eyes either way.

“It’s your turn, though,” Bokuto says to Barnes.

“Fuck. Okay. Uh,” Barnes replies, lifting his head from his phone. “Hmm. Never have I ever… fucked a teammate. Past or present.”

His sentence meets multiple objections, the loudest coming from Inunaki and Hinata. Atsumu’s eyes meet with Kiyoomi’s for a moment, striking Atsumu with goosebumps on his arm, and Kiyoomi turns to reach for the liquor bottle to fill his glass. Atsumu tries not to linger on the fact that _he_ is the reason Kiyoomi is about to slam down a shot of tequila, because of _that night_ and the _day after_ and then _the next days_ and – Bokuto yells, distracting him. “What do you mean you’ve never fucked a teammate?”

“What do you mean _you_ have?” Barnes retorts, a bratty grin on his face. “I might be in the minority right now, but that doesn’t justify y’all’s thirst.”

“My boyfriend was my setter,” Bokuto says indignantly, which distracts Atsumu enough to laugh. “I came out to have a good time, and I’m honestly being attacked right now.”

“He wasn’t the only teammate ya fucked,” Atsumu reminds him while snickering.

“Hey!” Bokuto objects, but it’s too late.

Hinata turns to him, eyes wide. “What?!”

“Too much information,” Bokuto mumbles into his glass.

“Shots, people,” Inunaki reminds them, and they all down their glasses.

“Omi-kun,” Bokuto starts. “We all know Tsum-Ts-”

“He wasn’t the only one,” Kiyoomi interrupts him with a slight, deviant smirk on the corner of his lip. Atsumu feels his mouth go dry, his stomach dropping with… disappointment? Jealousy?

Bokuto gapes.

Hinata seems frozen.

The room goes very, very still.

Finally Inunaki laughs loudly and elbows Kiyoomi again in the ribs. Kiyoomi very calmly shuffles further away from him while the rest of the team try to question him on _who the fuck_ it was to be able to distract Kiyoomi from volleyball, but Kiyoomi just ignores them.

“This game is becomin’ wild,” Atsumu mumbles, trying to mute his reaction a little by a casual statement.

“It’s your turn,” Inunaki tells him, and then advises him sagely, “use this opportunity to make it wilder.”

“Never have I ever gone to a strip club,” Atsumu announces in a hurry, desperate for a change of topic.

“You _what?”_ Bokuto exclaims while Barnes laughs loudly. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I would’ve-”

“As a customer or as a worker?” Kiyoomi asks like he’s asking about whether the weather will be cloudy tomorrow.

The team falls silent once again in a span of five minutes. Atsumu’s breath is knocked out of his lungs, and when his mouth opens, no words come out.

The question for distraction apparently becomes one of disaster.

“What do you mean a _worker?”_ Meian asks incredulously when he sees that Atsumu is unable to speak.

“My answer depends on the clarification,” Kiyoomi replies with a shrug.

“A…. worker,” Atsumu finally clarifies, getting back his voice. Kiyoomi nods, and throws his shot back.

The team loses it. Inunaki finally lunges onto Kiyoomi, but the man swiftly shifts to the side, letting the libero fall face-first onto the carpet. Bokuto whistles, and Hinata leans over to ask with big, glossy eyes. “Did you dance?”

“I stripped,” Kiyoomi corrects him.

Atsumu feels like he’s going to combust. A furious blush crawls from his neck to his cheeks, and he clears his throat in an attempt to gain his voice once more.

Kiyoomi stripped. For _people._ He took his clothes off and danced and _smiled_ and did favors for _other people –_

Tomas intertwines his fingers below his chin and asks loudly, unashamed. “How much did you make?”

“Depends on the night,” Kiyoomi replies calmly. “But my regulars liked to tip me. So I could say about 30,000 Yen for a good night.”

“Will you strip for us if we pay you 60 thousand?” Inunaki asks with glowing eyes, propping himself on his elbow from where he fell. Atsumu suddenly feels thankful and hateful for his presence. He’s clear about whether he wants to see Kiyoomi strip, but he doesn’t feel like sharing. At all.

Kiyoomi sighs, looking at the ceiling.

“I raise it to 70 thousand,” Tomas interjects.

“80.”

Atsumu bites his lip at the attention on Kiyoomi, not sure if the jealousy is about the attention or about the man himself.

“I am _not_ stripping for any of you.”

“Omi-kun,” Bokuto pouts. “Teach us.”

“Teach you how to strip?” Kiyoomi asks with a raised brow.

“Yeah! I’m sure Akaashi would like it!” Sweet, sweet Bokuto. Atsumu makes a mental note to hug him tight tomorrow for not launching onto Kiyoomi with lust. Like some others did.

He shoots a look at an oblivious Inunaki.

“I’ll have to ask Tobio,” Hinata says thoughtfully. “But I think he’d want it.”

A hug for Hinata too.

“Learn yourselves,” Kiyoomi shrugs them off immediately. “There are courses.”

“Why am I not shocked that the quietest one is the dirtiest one?” Inunaki mumbles from where he’s lying on the floor, now looking at the ceiling on his back. “I knew Omi-kun held secrets.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. Atsumu remains silent, afraid that his voice will shake if he speaks.

“Okay, my turn,” Inunaki announces, shuffling to sit upright. He bumps into Kiyoomi in his efforts, who calmly shuffles closer towards Bokuto to avoid the touch, unaware of Atsumu’s intense gaze trained on him. “A’right. Let’s take an easy round. Never have I ever got paid for sex.”

There is a silence. Then Bokuto raises his glass to his mouth.

“ _What!?_ ” Atsumu yells from where he’s sitting, completely shocked, suddenly regaining his voice after Kiyoomi’s revelation. “What!?”

Bokuto grimaces after he swallows the liquor and then pouts. “Kuroo told me it would be fun-”

“Akaashi knows this?” Tomas asks, entirely drunk but focused on Bokuto with all his being.

“He does,” Bokuto nods, then grins. “I got paid really well tho!”

“Fuck,” Atsumu groans. “Can’t believe this. How many secrets doya hide from me, Bokkun?”

“Not much else,” Bokuto laughs, leaning on his palms behind his back. All of them are drunk. Well, all except one, Atsumu guesses. He chances a look at Kiyoomi, who’s listening to Bokuto with one brow raised. He tries not to think of him in certain… positions. Clothes. Or maybe not in those clothes. Not in clothes at all.

“Your turn, Omi,” Tomas informs him, interrupting Atsumu’s frenzy of thoughts.

“Hmm,” Kiyoomi says, thinking for a second. They hear the faint sound of the music playing in the background from someone’s phone. Kiyoomi tilts his head. Atsumu wants to ask if he looked at his customers the way he’s looking at Atsumu right now, but he doesn’t have the time. “Never have I ever given someone a stupid gift.”

He says it _so surely_ that Atsumu’s definitely done it.

And, well.

Bokuto snickers, shooting a look at him. Atsumu opens his mouth furiously after swallowing down his shot – way too fast. “Bokkun, if this is about the cock ring I bought ya I swear to god-”

Hinata explodes.

“What?” he hollers, rolling on his back in his fits of laughter.

Inunaki is almost the same, although he seems far too gone to regain himself and stand back up. Tomas has his head in his hands, Barnes is trying to console him with gentle pats on his back. Atsumu feels a wild grin conquer his face, the way it does when he refuses to get embarrassed and embraces it all instead, and he stares at Kiyoomi, who looks back at him with alcohol-flushed cheeks but focused eyes. “Bokkun has a pretty dick, what can I say? If ya like it, then ya should’ve put a ring on it.”

“Dear _god-”_ they hear Inunaki groaning from the floor, and Tomas stands up, unbalanced on his feet. “I can’t take this much gayness anymore. Where’s the fucking bathroom?”

“Second door on your left,” Atsumu directs him, still grinning. He looks back at Kiyoomi, and finds the man looking back at him with amusement shining in the dark, dark eyes.

✵

Things quiet down pretty quickly and considerably when Bokuto gets on the phone with Akaashi, and Hinata starts whining about how much he misses Kageyama. When Bokuto returns, Hinata’s head is on Atsumu’s lap, while Meian’s waiting for Tomas to be able to carry him home. Bokuto glances at the kitchen where Sakusa seems to be cleaning up like the Good Guest he is, and he gets a hold of Hinata, almost draping him over his shoulder. “Tobio-kun texted me to tell me I’m a dead man if I leave Hinata alone. We’re off.”

Meian turns to him from where he’s standing in front of the bathroom door. “Call a taxi for us too.”

“I don’t think I’ll survive until the morning,” Atsumu whines, clutching his stomach on the sofa. “May have gone overboard.”

“Can someone stay with him?” Meian asks, looking around. Barnes took Inunaki, who potentially has mild alcohol poisoning, and the rest is already coupled, except for one person. “Omi? Are you free?”

“I’d very much rather not,” Kiyoomi replies from the kitchen, drying his hands with a towel. He walks into the living room, looking around if he has left anything behind. “Miya can survive on his own.”

“No, I can’t,” Atsumu whines from the sofa.

“We’ll owe you one,” Bokuto tells him from the hallway. “I won’t ask you about your stripping if that works as payment.”

Kiyoomi stares at Bokuto, perhaps considering how many sharp motions are required to knock him out. Bokuto looks back at him with pleading eyes, and after a staring challenge – which Atsumu _knows_ Kiyoomi can and will win, no matter what – Kiyoomi averts his eyes, takes a deep breath in, and exhales in a sigh. He slowly leaves the towel back onto the kitchen counter, and sits down calmly at his previous spot on the sofa, clearly hoping he can pass the night without further effort than watching the TV.

Atsumu tries to regulate the bratty joy sparkling in his chest.

✵

While and after everybody leaves with loud, whispered or drunk goodbyes, Kiyoomi is still at the corner of the sofa, watching the unending quiz show. Atsumu waits for a little while just to make sure… he doesn’t know what. Just to let him be, he guesses. Then he flops down next to him with anticipation, but tries to keep his voice light. “Enjoyed yer night, Omi-omi?”

“I would enjoy it more if I could use a clean restroom,” Kiyoomi replies in a bored tone, taking another sip from his wine. “And not babysit you.”

“Ya could use mine,” Atsumu states with excitement barely hidden in his voice, pointing at his bedroom. “I have a separate one.”

“And what tells me that your own bathroom is cleaner?” Kiyoomi asks without interest, eyes on the screen.

“I prepared for ya,” Atsumu says, grinning while he throws both of his arms onto the top of the sofa. “Bleach and all. Ya’ll be fine.”

Kiyoomi turns his head, and scrutinizes Atsumu for several seconds.

“You’re not drunk,” he finally announces with a subtle tone of anger to his voice, squinting at him.

Atsumu feels his grin widen, sacrificing none of his over-the-top body language. “Ya, I’m not.”

No use in pretending. Game recognize game.

Kiyoomi murmurs something under his breath, and motions to stand up and leave. Atsumu doesn’t skip a beat and grabs his wrist, the contact scorching his tingling fingertips. Kiyoomi turns to look at him with his deep, annoyed, dark, dark eyes. “Let go, Miya.”

Atsumu instead tugs him towards himself, forcing Kiyoomi to be face to face with him. Just this much proximity is snapping his senses awake, but he makes sure to keep his voice low and gravelly. “Doya really want me to?”

“Sincerely,” Kiyoomi replies, his gaze unwavering.

Atsumu lets go of his wrist with disappointment. Kiyoomi turns around to pick up his phone from the coffee table, leaving Atsumu with the sudden heaviness of watching him leave, sinking deep.

Atsumu asks the first question that pops into his head, in a hurry which he’ll never admit to have. “How much forya to strip for me?”

A much relished pause in Kiyoomi’s motions. “You couldn’t take it.”

“Oi!” Atsumu objects, relieved at the response. “I have the money!”

“Not the money,” Kiyoomi turns to him, that same deviant smirk tugging at his lips. Atsumu feels his blood burn in his veins with the need to smear that expression into his mattress, his anxiety somehow intensifying at Kiyoomi’s dangerous gaze. He swallows the excess saliva accumulating in his mouth.

Kiyoomi tilts his head, and explains like he’s talking to a 5-year-old, which _somehow_ makes him even _more_ goddamn attractive. “There is a no-touch policy. You couldn’t take it.”

Atsumu’s brow shoots up at the clear disdain, and in a moment his desperation is overcome by drunken courage. He leans further back, tilting his chin up as a dare. “Try me.”

“And what will I gain from that?” Kiyoomi asks in a bored voice. He walks towards the genkan, and Atsumu shuffles to his feet to follow him.

“Well, back in the hotel,” Atsumu states, leaning on the wall with arms crossed on his chest, a smug grin on his lips, “ya seemed to like what I did to ya.”

“That was a one-time thing,” Kiyoomi states calmly, grabbing his jacket.

“Can’t really say that when it’s already happened twice in a span of 24 hours, Omi-kun, and then several times more,” Atsumu says through his grin.

It needs to work, or Atsumu’s throwing himself off the balcony.

“Don’t know if it will be worth my time,” Kiyoomi reasons with no interest, voice a bit muffled as he bends over to wear his shoes. Atsumu feels the previously ignored heat and despair conquer him.

He moves quickly. This is what this whole night is about, and he’s not letting his chance escape. He stands behind Kiyoomi, hooking his fingers into the belt loops of his slacks, and jerks him backwards with one sharp tug. Kiyoomi’s breath leaves his teeth in an audible hiss, and Atsumu’s hands slowly snake their way under Kiyoomi’s button-down, curling his arms around the sturdy, warm torso, the contact zapping him from his fingertips to his toes. Bending over Kiyoomi’s back, he sighs into his ear, feeling the shiver fully this time with a dark feeling of triumph. “Coz I missed ya, and I know ya missed me back.”

Kiyoomi slowly straightens up and takes a deep breath. Atsumu mimics him, trying to understand whether this is acceptance or rejection, unsure if he’s about to get slapped or worse, ignored. Hopefully neither.

“And you’re already failing with the no-touch policy,” Kiyoomi states finally, slowly turning to face him.

Atsumu’s breath catches in his throat, but he doesn’t relax his arms surrounding Kiyoomi’s bare skin, still unsure about the response. He unconsciously bites his lip, taking a deep inhale through his nose, and stares at Kiyoomi’s mouth. Kiyoomi raises one hand and grasps his chin from both sides, roughly wiping his thumb over Atsumu’s bottom lip, setting it free. Atsumu almost reels in surprise, taking in the unexpected dominance from the man, coupled with the need to understand the abrupt, internal need to submit to him.

He’ll play along. Whatever needed to fuck him once more.

“Does the no-touch policy cancel out if we both strip?” he asks, his voice much raspier than intended, hopefully not as obviously desperate to Kiyoomi as it is to himself.

Kiyoomi’s ghostly smirk returns again, flashing in a second and then disappearing, possibly unaware of the effect it has on Atsumu. “First, you need to earn it.”

“I’ll be good for ya,” Atsumu breathes without a second thought, tilting his chin up and wishing they were closer, even though there are mere centimeters between them. He ignores the burst of excitement and impatience in him, subtly worried if his crazed heartbeat is audible. Kiyoomi’s lips curl.

“I know,” he states, terrifyingly calm and frustratingly smug.

Then he suddenly slams Atsumu onto the closet doors, rattling them, and kisses him so intensely Atsumu thinks his knees might give out in shock and lust. When he moves past the initial shock of _holy shit that worked and he’s kissing me he’s kissing me he’s kissing me,_ he focuses on Kiyoomi’s lips, trying to savor them. He can taste the dry, zesty notes of wine on Kiyoomi’s tongue, like citrus, something specific Atsumu cannot quite name. Something tarte, for sure, and despite not being particularly fond of white wine, Atsumu finds himself wanting more of it. He licks into Kiyoomi’s mouth, sucking on his tongue just a little, and sneaks his hands back under the black shirt he’s wearing, lightly scratching across his ribs with calloused fingertips. He is immediately rewarded with a groan onto his lips and feels a hand knotting in his hair.

And at that moment, he notices that all his disquiet from previous months is gone. It feels cathartic, to kiss Sakusa Kiyoomi, like he’s unearthed some secret nobody else knows, not even him, or maybe like he’s let go of a big secret he’s been holding inside ever since he fucked the man for the first time. The kiss is so intense that he can feel the abstract, bitter aftertaste of Kiyoomi’s presence on his mouth and his kiss-bitten lips already, and it feels _right._ It fits, with his veins aflame, with his fingertips tingling, with his skin aching to be kissed and bruised. This feeling was what he had – unsuccessfully – chased all summer.

Atsumu thinks he is a fool for not noticing it before.

He whines when Kiyoomi slips his hands into the back of his jeans, yanking him forward to meet the roll of his hips. Atsumu throws his head back to breathe through the tantalizing friction, and Kiyoomi doesn’t waste a second before aiming for his neck, kissing and biting the tender skin there, his skin blooming in pain of the definite bruises. Atsumu knows he’s embarrassingly hard already, but he doesn’t mind – he can feel Kiyoomi too, through the ridiculously well-fitting pants.

They don’t stop kissing breathlessly until Atsumu forces him out of the genkan. Kiyoomi tumbles out of his shoes gracelessly, and forces Atsumu backward onto the sofa. He has a hungry, vicious look in his eyes, and Atsumu can feel his cock excitedly twitching under the dark, dark gaze. Kiyoomi slowly climbs on top of him, straddling him with those goddamn slacks, and peeks down at Atsumu’s lap. His voice is cool, almost bored. “Too tight jeans, I’m assuming.”

“They’re uncomfortable, wanna take’em off?” Atsumu offers, grinning with his swollen lips.

“Not really. I like to watch you suffer,” Kiyoomi purrs. Atsumu’s breath hitches at the statement, and he feels goosebumps fanning across his skin at the nape of his neck.

Kiyoomi smirks before leaning in to kiss him once more. Atsumu finds his hands entangled in Kiyoomi’s hair, trying to pull the man closer. Kiyoomi grinds onto him mercilessly, drawing broken moans and involuntary whines out of him, sometimes distracted by leaving more marks on Atsumu’s skin, sometimes focusing on kissing him until his thoughts are a blur.

“Omi,” Atsumu whines after a few minutes when the friction is beyond tantalizing and bordering on torturing. Kiyoomi hums onto his neck where he’s leaving deeper bruises, biting and sucking greedily like he can’t taste Atsumu enough. “Omi, if– ifya don’t– I need–”

“I know what you need,” Kiyoomi replies easily, kissing his collarbone with unexpected softness. He lifts his head, barely brushing Atsumu’s ear, giving him goosebumps. “I’ll give it to you when I see fit.”

Atsumu groans in pain and pleasure, a sudden jolt of electricity right to his cock as he rolls his head back onto the sofa. His hands are gripping Kiyoomi’s waist for dear life, as if it weren’t for the grounding feeling of the contact, he’d melt away.

Kiyoomi grinds onto him harder than he has before with scary flexibility, and moans right into his ear, speaking after the wet sound of his lips parting. “Do you think you deserve to be fucked, Atsumu?”

Atsumu fists his hands as desperation and animalistic desire sear through him. He claws uselessly at Kiyoomi’s pale skin, unable to do anything other than letting out a crooked moan. The newfound depths of Kiyoomi mesmerize him, but no, mesmerized is putting it lightly. Atsumu has never submitted to someone, and he suddenly finds himself fighting the urge of wanting to be called _good_ and actually, _what a good boy,_ or perhaps, _my good boy, _and he’s never – this is _new._ And then there’s his goddamn voice – his hoarse, deep, coally voice vibrating through Atsumu’s entire being, something demanding, _taking_ what he wants by force.

A sudden curiosity about the number of people who have heard him like this crosses his mind, but Atsumu’s too busy feeling desperate to be fucked that he doesn’t notice it.

“I’ll be good for ya,” Atsumu repeats, panting, and hears Kiyoomi chuckle onto his neck, low and gravelly.

“Prove it, then,” Kiyoomi says, pulling back. Dark, dark eyes. Cruel. Challenging. “Beg me like you really _mean_ it.”

Atsumu bites his lip, absolutely unable to rationalize how the humiliation burns within him and takes him higher. He feels himself getting impossibly harder under Kiyoomi, and he looks at him with desperation and hurry, words tumbling out of his mouth. “Please, Omi, _please –_ I’ll do whatever ya want – I’ll be _good–”_

Kiyoomi hums, eyes scanning Atsumu’s face. Atsumu doesn’t know what he’s showing, but Kiyoomi purses his lips when Atsumu whispers a broken _“please”_ after a heavy half minute of staring into each other’s eyes.

“I’ll take your word,” he replies thoughtfully, that smug and dangerous almost-grin back on his face. “Let’s hope you stay loyal to it.”

He stands up, casually walking towards Atsumu’s bedroom, and turns around once to check with a sinful, cold-hearted expression. “Are you going to stay there and miss all the _fun,_ Atsumu?”

Atsumu scrambles to his feet, following him with a raging boner and no coherency whatsoever in his head.

“In front of the bed,” Kiyoomi orders him, looking around the bedroom. Atsumu stands, fingers trembling, and looks at him. Kiyoomi smirks.

He stands in front of Atsumu, hands dancing at the curve of his shoulders and the plane of his abs, finally settling on Atsumu’s hip bones, every second of contact a mix of torture and blessing for Atsumu. Kiyoomi unzips the jeans slowly, and with one careless flicker of his hand, pushes Atsumu onto the bed to yank the jeans off him. Atsumu falls, breathless, his erection now painfully obvious under his boxer briefs.

“Shirt. Off.”

Atsumu arches his back off the bed to remove the t-shirt obediently, and he is caught completely unprepared when he finds Kiyoomi on top of him as soon as he manages to get the shirt off. Kiyoomi bites his bottom lip, then allows his tongue to dance on Atsumu’s palate before gently sucking at the bottom lip again. Atsumu lets out a loud groan, maybe a sigh. It definitely sounds like begging, now. And he cannot feel one single cell in his body feeling ashamed of it.

But he feels every last cell in his body being electrified as soon as Kiyoomi touches his left nipple, and he growls while throwing his head back.

“Responsive,” Kiyoomi murmurs, as if he’s making objective observations in a scientific experiment, and bends over to take the nipple into his mouth.

If this goes on like this, Atsumu will come untouched, and that will be fucking embarrassing. Atsumu growls, scratching at Kiyoomi’s shoulder with his other hand fisted in the black curls, and lets out an unrestricted, loud moan when he feels Kiyoomi biting him.

“Sounds better when you actually mean it,” Kiyoomi says, smirking onto his skin.

“Whadaya– I always–”

“At the hotel,” Kiyoomi interrupts, his eyes pinning Atsumu to the spot, his fingers idly rolling around his nipple between each other. “I thought those contrived moans were the prettiest sounds you could make, but you’ve proven me wrong.”

Atsumu doesn’t know how to reply to that. More correctly, Atsumu doesn’t know how to respond altogether, but he tries to form words nonetheless. His attempts come to an abrupt end when Kiyoomi palms him over the thin fabric of boxer briefs. He feels despair conquer him, his voice cracking in places, but he is too tense to give a single fuck. “Omi– Omi – please–”

“On all fours,” Kiyoomi announces unceremoniously, eyeing the nightstand before opening the drawers. He successfully withdraws a half-empty lube bottle and a string of condoms, and rips one apart.

Atsumu shakes. His body is poised, waiting on his knees and elbows, blood thrumming through his veins, absolutely on fire. Sure, he hoped to have fun, but this exceeds even him – it is not the submissive Omi he’s used to – well, however he got used to _that_ in _one_ day of sex – but Kiyoomi is taking control, and he’s doing it so lethally that all Atsumu can do is submit. He thought this would be another good fuck, another night where Kiyoomi let himself be ruined, but this – this is too much, too good, too _close._ He feels shivers running down his limbs, his knuckles white at his grip on the bed sheet, and admits in a quiet moment that this was not what he expected from tonight. Or perhaps, this was not what he expected from Kiyoomi.

But, well, he’s never been more glad to be surprised.

Kiyoomi’s fingertips brush softly across his waist before sneaking under the boxer’s elastic, and then he pulls them down. Atsumu bites his lip at the rough voice tainted with a smirk. “Beautiful.”

Atsumu gasps audibly, the praise prickling his skin like wasps. He is aware that he’s clenching around nothing, but he cannot hold it back – he opens his mouth to beg again, but he hears the lube bottle’s familiar click, and then a finger is gently massaging his rim. He surrenders, buries his face into the comforter and groans loudly.

It doesn’t take long until Kiyoomi is fingering him, though it’s agonizingly slow, first with two fingers, then three. Despite the languid pace, Atsumu is a babbling mess, precome dripping in pearly drops onto the bed. He sees sparks when Kiyoomi curls his freakishly long fingers just right and hits Atsumu’s prostate, and he barely holds himself back from coming right there.

“Omi, _please–”_

He hears Kiyoomi unzipping his slacks, and turns his head, completely dazed, to look at the man spreading lube over himself in a few wet strokes. He doesn’t act gentle, his own hand moving roughly across his erection, and frankly, Atsumu is not looking for gentleness – all he’s asking right now is to be fucked roughly into the mattress and forget his own name. Still, his grunt is more animal than human when Kiyoomi slides into him with one smooth, vicious motion. He hears Kiyoomi moan, and his cock twitches at the sudden fullness and satisfaction rolling through him.

Then another urge, another blatant, merciless _need_ finds it way to the surface, and Atsumu is too vulnerable; he cannot fight it, cannot hold his walls up, cannot preserve his dignity – “Omi–”

“Hmm?” Kiyoomi asks a bit breathlessly, pulling back to thrust into him once again.

“Omi, kiss me, kiss me _more–”_ It’s a broken, contorted, half-moan, half-whine of a demand. His face burns with shame and lust from where it’s buried into the comforter.

He feels Kiyoomi’s hips stutter, and the man himself taking a knifelike inhale.

Kiyoomi pulls out sharply, reaching around Atsumu to flip him over the mattress. He leans onto Atsumu as Atsumu breathes the fresh air in big gulps, and he props himself up on one elbow, guiding himself back in with his left hand. His thrust is simultaneous with their lips meeting again, and Atsumu can swear he sees fireworks behind his eyelids – the emotion is impossible to describe in anything other than an explosion of colors and fiery, sizzling lights.

Kiyoomi kisses him like there’s no tomorrow – _fuck that feels so good_ – and true to his Olympian physique, manages to fuck him through every single tug at his hair and the nails grazing his skin. Atsumu feels the dizzying heat entwining him, threatening to spill out at the first crack it sees, but he doesn’t want it to end just yet –

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi murmurs onto his lips, and drags Atsumu’s bottom lip out a little towards himself before letting go and speaking again. “I want to watch you come for me.”

Atsumu growls gutturally, his insides grating at the request, and clenches around Kiyoomi. He hears Kiyoomi gasp, and his eyelids flutter open when he raises one hand and licks his palm, looking directly into the dark, dark gaze.

He lowers his hand and shivers thoroughly when he touches his long-neglected cock. His eyes roll backward the first time Kiyoomi’s thrust meets his hand’s pump perfectly. It takes an embarrassingly short amount of time for Atsumu to start moaning in hiccups, repeating Kiyoomi’s name nonstop and whining in both pain and pleasure.

“Look at me,” Kiyoomi orders softly, and Atsumu opens his eyes in the shocking electricity of his pulse and blinding desire. Kiyoomi smiles indecipherably at him, perhaps like the spring, perhaps like an earthquake – Atsumu doesn’t know – and then Kiyoomi’s voice comes out strained and… adoring. “Gorgeous.”

The praise stabs Atsumu in the gut this time – it’s not mild nor pleasant at this point, it’s just adding to the dizzying, nauseating height and intensity of the emotions – and it violently hurls Atsumu right over the edge, drawing an animalistic growl right out of his chest. His eyes roll back as he comes in destructive, bone-shattering waves, and Kiyoomi fucks him all the way through it. He clenches in spasms around the thick cock, and hears Kiyoomi’s breaths stuttering and his hips reaching an erratic pace.

“Omi-kun,” he breathes when he gains control of his eyes again, his gaze glossy with lust and adoration. Kiyoomi looks at him, mouth slightly agape, his hips at a ruthless rhythm. Atsumu pulls him down to a kiss, and bites his lip, clawing at his hips. Kiyoomi groans loudly, like an animal, into his mouth and thrusts three, four more times before collapsing onto Atsumu, exhaling hot, damp breaths onto his collarbone.

After a long silence, Atsumu laughs, shaking Kiyoomi’s tired body with vibrations. “Well, that was _fun.”_

✵

After a long night of lazily kissing on the bed and some resemblance of cuddling – still more than what Atsumu expected of Kiyoomi – Atsumu wakes up to an empty bed. He pads to the kitchen to find the house empty as well, and picks up his phone to a text from him.

> **Omi-kun [8:32 AM]**
> 
> This was only because I wanted to top. Still a one-time thing.

Atsumu smirks. Kiyoomi’s a bad liar.

**go slower. whiskey.**

The first thing that anyone who sips whiskey notices is this: it burns.

Then the drinker has to make a choice. They either put the drink down and try to rid themselves of the burning sensation, or they savor it. The first is the natural tendency of most, since the sensation is unpleasant and aggressive – for the inexperienced drinker, the unexplored aroma might just not be worth it. The latter, though, is a choice of self-control and perhaps cursed curiosity; if one chooses to withstand the searing first impression, one can actually taste the liquor’s underlying notes for fleeting moments after the heat subsides.

It’s vulpine, both in color and personality: the rich auburn color is only further proof of its earthy roots, but the character that is something to talk about on its own.

Whiskey is an assessment of price and reward, but one thing is clear: If you choose it, then you’ve chosen a definitive path drawn ahead of you. Whiskey is a solid choice, a statement; it’s a heavy, patient, but demanding drink, not a flashy cocktail to flaunt or something light you can sip mindlessly. It requires effort and a refined taste to be truly appreciated. It asks for your time wantonly; otherwise, if you drink it too quickly, you’ll see that it will easily destroy you and leave a merciless wreck behind.

It’s potentially lethal, rightfully self-confident, and, without a doubt, bold. If you do choose it as your companion, it’s almost impossible to find something that holds its place. Someone accustomed and used to the unequaled burn and sizzle of whiskey cannot easily switch to anything else. It’s a trap, in all honesty, but a rich, rich one.

And Kiyoomi knows it’s a trap long before he walks into it. It doesn’t make even one step of his falter, anyway.

✵

Reluctantly, and without much conscious thought, they fall into a routine.

It’s based on their practice schedule, but it works. They meet once a week, minimum, and especially after wins or losses with increased frequency. It feels like a somewhat comfortable knife’s edge – it’s stable, reliable, though still a bit unsettling.

Kiyoomi watches.

He watches with a softened heart while Atsumu falls into the comfort of their routine as the autumn leaves leave their place to a blazing, burning cold weather with snowstorms. He watches with a wicked satisfaction when Atsumu’s proud, big mouth curls into a gentle _oh_ as soon as Kiyoomi touches his warm skin with his fingertips. He watches gladly while Atsumu relaxes over time, and the press of his lips against Kiyoomi becomes lazy, languid, luxurious. He watches silently as Atsumu quietly cries with frustration after their loss to Adlers, and he responds with equal fury when Atsumu slams him onto the wall under the hot spray of the shower to blindly kiss him. He watches with a dark satisfaction rooting into his stomach when Atsumu whips out his belt with every intention of hurting him. He watches Atsumu fondly while he’s setting out the plates for the dinner he brought over on many occasions before they indulge in more carnal delights. He watches, with a yet-unidentified emotion, Atsumu’s small smile when Kiyoomi thanks him, and he finds himself experimenting to find what lets him see the expression again and again. He watches with surrender as Atsumu fights with him after tough losses, yelling at him at what both of them could have done better and slamming doors when he leaves – it takes time for Kiyoomi to learn how to handle an Atsumu dealing with defeat, one on one. He watches with bittersweet heartbreak when Atsumu appears on his doorstep with a mumbled apology and some umeboshi.

He only notices he’s been watching for perhaps far too long when his eyes trace the drops falling from Atsumu’s hair and sleeves when he appears at Kiyoomi’s door holding a kitten on a Friday evening.

“What is this?” Kiyoomi asks, surprise tainting his voice.

“She was shiverin’ under the rain,” Atsumu explains with an evident pout. “I’ll take her home, but can she stay here until I return?”

Kiyoomi wordlessly steps aside, letting Atsumu come inside. Atsumu holds the white, muddy kitten forward; she is scruffy looking with wet fur furiously sticking out, absolutely terrified and true to his word, shivering. “Doya have a spare cardboard box? She’ll feel safer in there.”

Kiyoomi nods, turning to find something that can work, and appears with a box after a short search in his meticulous storage room. Atsumu smiles brightly, and gently puts the cat into the box. Then he reaches into his pockets to retrieve a bag of… cat food.

“I carry some around in case I see a hungry one,” he explains mindlessly as a reply to Kiyoomi’s gaze, and Kiyoomi takes a deep inhale at the unbidden warmth blossoming in his chest so intense that it hurts for a second.

He takes the plastic bag from Atsumu’s hand instead, and speaks flatly. “Get in the shower. You will catch a cold.”

Atsumu nods distractedly and steps out of his shoes, leaving wet imprints on the floor while walking to the bathroom, and closes the door after him. Kiyoomi hears the shower start, and after one last, softened look at the terrified cat in the box, he turns to the kitchen to find a disposable bowl.

He tries to ignore the warm, intense ache in his chest. It has always hurt to see how breathtaking Atsumu is. There is no reason to mull over it now.

✵

They sit on Kiyoomi’s couch, listening to the shuffling sounds coming from the cardboard box as the cat settles down into the unfamiliar smell of Kiyoomi’s sacrificed small blanket. Atsumu suddenly turns to him, putting down his bowl of ramen. “So, for today, I had somethin’ planned.”

Kiyoomi raises a brow, keeping his face as emotionless as possible at the potential surprises flooding his mind, and he motions him to proceed.

“I’ll showya what I learned in the last three months,” Atsumu says proudly. “Imma strip forya, Omi-kun.”

“Oh?” Kiyoomi says – doesn’t ask why – and leans back on the sofa with curiosity and relief after putting his bowl down as well. Atsumu grins at him wildly and stands up. Kiyoomi assesses the situation, eyeing the borrowed sweatpants and t-shirt Atsumu’s wearing, decidedly quite unsexy.

What is Atsumu hoping to get out of this? They’re already having regular sex.

His lips involuntarily curl upwards when Atsumu tumbles over his own foot while walking towards the middle of the room.

Atsumu moves the cat in the box to a further corner to perhaps preserve her delicate sensibilities and innocence, and Kiyoomi cannot help the endearment rising in his chest, although he shoots it down immediately. He tries to distract himself by guessing what kind of _learning_ Atsumu has been doing, vaguely wondering if he should have taught Atsumu himself to save both of them from the embarrassment they’re about to go through, since this is probably a first for Atsumu – he would have boasted about it non-stop otherwise. The smell of ramen hangs in the air, and Atsumu finally lets the cardboard box go with anxious motions, confirming further that it is a debut performance.

“Music,” he says with a sudden, charming flush rising on his cheeks, which traps Kiyoomi’s gaze for too long. Atsumu takes out his phone and puts it down promptly after choosing a song – clearly chosen beforehand, regarding the speed he’s put it on. It’s something too fast for someone inexperienced, but Kiyoomi decides against commenting, waiting in anticipation. Atsumu hurriedly walks towards the door, turning off the lights to leave them at the dim bath of the warm, yellow lamp standing at the corner. He looks at Kiyoomi, and Kiyoomi looks back at him, tilting his head in curiosity and interest. Atsumu closes his eyes, and takes a step back.

He starts with grinding his hips in beat, then throws his head back with fingers caressing the column of his throat and the outline of his torso, barely visible under the baggy t-shirt. He slowly reveals his lower abdomen when his arms stretched above his head, the faint line of dark hair descending deliciously under the sweatpants. Kiyoomi curls his fingers into a fist and then relaxes them, repeatedly, not knowing what else to do with the flood of lust washing over him at seeing Atsumu lose himself in music and letting his body loose. He suddenly wants to call out for him to come sit on his lap and give Kiyoomi his all and more, the way he always does, but he opts for watching Atsumu’s athletic, thick body curl and bend under the bass instead, his mind invaded by lust and hunger with barely any room for criticism on technique.

Kiyoomi thinks that maybe the obnoxious amounts he’s been tipped could be justified, if all his customers felt like this while watching him.

Atsumu suddenly strips off his t-shirt and spins it in the air while flowing with the music, his eyes closed. _You’re rushing,_ Kiyoomi wants to warn him, _the way you do with everything in your life._ But he doesn’t have the time, because Atsumu throws the t-shirt at him, which lands promptly on Kiyoomi’s face. He hears Atsumu giggle surprisingly cutely, and suppresses the curl of his own lips while he moves the clothing away.

It’s not going badly. To be honest, it’s going surprisingly well for the ridiculous, exuberant, clumsy Atsumu, and Kiyoomi finds it impressive despite himself – Atsumu is flexible, he knows that, but he never saw him showing off this flexibility in something aside than volleyball or sex. (Seeing someone dance is like peeling back another layer and looking into another naked patch of skin, Kiyoomi realizes.) But the next is the true test, and Kiyoomi knows firsthand that taking off your pants in rhythm to music while maintaining sex appeal is no small feat; it is, in fact, one of the hardest details that really make a performance top-notch. He raises a brow as Atsumu bends over, the man's thick body nearly bent in half as one leg slips free from the grey cotton sweatpants easily although a bit clunkily; however, the next leg – the next gloriously, thick muscled leg – gets stuck as expected. Kiyoomi can see Atsumu's eyes widen, the panic and the reluctance to break the moment evident on his face, but he has to hop in place awkwardly or risk falling over.

Kiyoomi takes pity, perhaps softened because Atsumu is vulnerable for him, perhaps because he’s doing this for Kiyoomi with no advantage he’ll gain from it. His voice comes out gentle. "Don't rush the show on my account."

Atsumu huffs, still battling the sweatpants, and Kiyoomi’s lips quirk into a half grin. _"Go slower,_ Atsumu."

“It’s harder than it looks, Omi–” Atsumu groans, the magic completely broken. Before Kiyoomi can tell him he _knows_ how hard it is, Atsumu loses his balance entirely and trips over onto Kiyoomi’s lap in one catastrophic motion.

Kiyoomi’s expecting arms catch him just in time with a chuckle escaping from his lips, and Atsumu raises his mortified face from the sofa with his ears red. “I’m never doin’ that again.”

Kiyoomi can’t hold back his laugh, because Jesus _fuck_ he is so Hot and Dumb™️. “Slow down and let me show you how to do it right.”

Atsumu’s eyes sparkle at that, and he shifts his legs from their awkward bent position in front of the sofa to straddle Kiyoomi. “Can I kissya first? Before the no-touch policy?”

“I think the policy cancels out if I strip as well,” Kiyoomi responds with a hint of humor barely audible in his voice, although his heart leaps into his mouth like it always does when Atsumu does things like this – asking to kiss him, cooking for him, bringing in a terrified kitten because it’s cold outside. Atsumu smiles in sunlight, and leans forward to press his lips against Kiyoomi’s.

Kiyoomi was right. He indeed was, when he forbiddenly thought kissing Atsumu would be so intense that it would burn the throat. It reminds him of sipping whiskey, a little – the burn so offensive and all-encompassing, but you can’t put it down. It dizzies Kiyoomi with all the heat and lust trapped within it, and he is aware that over these past months he’s grown almost addicted to it. He kisses Atsumu back with passion, tongue tasting homemade ramen in his mouth but searching for Atsumu’s own taste, always underneath. He tastes like the sun, the lemon trees, and some orange-colored aroma that Kiyoomi cannot name properly.

Kiyoomi wants to kiss him until he can name it, and then kiss him some more.

Just to make sure he got it right.

The awkward, experimental and adorably stupid atmosphere of the strip tease leaves its place to lust-heavy, hot, wet breaths surrounding them while Atsumu moans into his mouth and grinds onto his lap. Kiyoomi digs his nails in on Atsumu’s back, just the way he knows he likes it, and hears Atsumu groan while peppering his jawline with lazy, damp kisses.

“Do you want a nightcap? Some whiskey?” Kiyoomi asks hoarsely and out of the blue, suddenly wanting to use his opportunity to compare the taste of the drink with kissing him. It’s a rushed thought, one of impulsive nature, like he's under a spell, the way he’s been since the Olympics night.

(Kiyoomi doesn’t ask why.)

Atsumu pulls back with an interested expression, but they come to a halt when they hear a faint screech coming from the room.

Atsumu turns to locate the sound, and Kiyoomi follows his gaze. There is shuffling in the box, and the cat meows with an unbelievably thin and grumpy voice.

“Omi-kun, repeat whatcha said,” Atsumu whispers.

“What?” Kiyoomi whispers back in confusion.

“She replied to _you,”_ Atsumu says quietly, in a hurry. “Say whatcha just said.”

Kiyoomi raises a brow at the stupidity of the idea, but after several seconds of contemplation he clears his throat – because he knows Atsumu won’t stop asking him, or maybe because he knows he can’t say no to Atsumu – and speaks towards the box. “Do you want whiskey?”

The cat screeches again, furiously pawing the side of the cardboard box. Atsumu looks at Kiyoomi with bright excitement and curiosity, and Kiyoomi feels his chest warm up again but bottles up the feeling for later, now focused on accompanying Atsumu in his discovery.

Atsumu stands up, quietly walks towards the box and kneels. “Whiskey?”

The cat mewls, annoyed and miserable.

“That’s yer name? Whiskey?” Atsumu asks with adoration and reaches into the box to cradle her. The cat starts to purr almost immediately, a surprisingly strong vibration for her size, and rubs her cheek onto Atsumu’s neck.

“Omi-kuun,” Atsumu breathes, brows furrowed in adoration and desperateness. “Her name is _Whiskey.”_

The kitten lets out a satisfied, tiny meow, and Atsumu sticks his bottom lip out with shiny eyes. Kiyoomi lets out a disbelieving laugh, his chest doing something truly funny that he cannot quite understand. He’s warm, fuzzy and lighthearted.

“Yes,” Atsumu replies suddenly. Kiyoomi raises his eyes from the kitten to Atsumu’s gold, flickering eyes.

“I’d liketa drink whiskey,” Atsumu concludes.

“Okay.”

It feels like an interlude, when Kiyoomi leaves to fetch the whiskey glasses and fill them with ice. A break in a show, a minute to catch your breath. When he returns, Atsumu's chest is still bare, and he is quietly watching the downpour of rain, the cat laid onto the blanket covering the armchair. Kiyoomi places one glass next to him, and sits at the opposite side of the sofa himself.

He realizes, too late, that in the quietude of his living room, under the flickering golden light of his lamp and with the downpour of raindrops rapping onto his windowpane, he can’t help but stare at Atsumu.

He should not watch Atsumu watching the rain.

Right.

But with his first sip of the drink, the flurry of his emotions calms down and starts to settle into place. He closes his eyes, almost humming at the sweet burn of the familiar taste, reminiscent of the man sitting in front of him. The comparison proves to be accurate, and Kiyoomi almost smiles slightly into his glass at the confirmation.

The steady, comforting sound of the rain combines with the soft purring of the kitten on the armchair, offering them a peaceful background noise, and Kiyoomi’s raging heartbeat starts to subside.

Time slows down, here.

Atsumu gazes out of the window, watching the storm rage on. He’s sipping his whiskey occasionally, and at one point, he takes his eyes off from the window and looks at Kiyoomi. Kiyoomi looks back at him when he notices. They don’t move, don’t smile, don’t talk. They just look at each other and feel the burn of whiskey down their throats. Maybe yearn a little. For what, Kiyoomi doesn’t know. He doesn’t dare to ask.

Kiyoomi finishes his glass first. He quietly puts it on the coffee table next to him, and leans his temple on his fist to resume watching. Atsumu smiles before returning to watch the rain, an expression for the first time since they started drinking.

“I’m not much of a whiskey drinker, really,” he murmurs, circling the rim of his glass with his fingertip. Kiyoomi watches the delicate, lazy motion for four full circles, hearing the rain and the purr, feeling the lost-in-the-distance but intimate presence of Atsumu. “It burns too much.”

“That’s surprising,” he hears himself replying, too spaced out to register his own words.

Atsumu slowly tips his head to one side, gaze flickering over to Kiyoomi. “Why’s that?”

And truly, _why_ is that?

Maybe it’s because Atsumu sometimes feels like embers under his hands. Maybe it’s the way Atsumu demands the uninterrupted attention of any room he enters, as if he doesn’t take it from Kiyoomi involuntarily. Maybe it’s how Kiyoomi wants to ask if his attention on Atsumu isn’t enough. Maybe it’s how Atsumu strolled into Kiyoomi’s life, took root, and made it look like he naturally has always been there. Maybe it’s how an unexpected kiss in the locker room electrifies his whole body. Maybe it’s Atsumu’s ability to jolt Kiyoomi’s senses awake and clear the fog when he kisses him.

Kiyoomi realizes there are too many reasons to name.

“I don’t know,” he replies quietly.

Atsumu hums at that, taking another sip, leaving a tiny amount behind. He swirls the liquid around the glass for a while. “I liked this one, though.”

Kiyoomi stops himself from asking why, biting his tongue until he tastes blood.

He watches the whiskey glass with the feeling of strong, unyielding ivies suddenly curling around his chest, imprisoning him with the intensity of… being here. Being _here,_ rooted, with Atsumu, under the rain, with the warm kitten, the burn of liquor lingering on his palate. He dazedly notices that he wished… life would be easier, if he was the glass of whiskey in Atsumu’s hand.

He raises his gaze, prying it away from the glass he envies. Atsumu quietly watches the rain, then downs the remaining liquid. He turns and carelessly puts the glass on the coffee table with a loud clunk.

 _Careful,_ Kiyoomi wants to warn. _You’ll break it._

_You just said you liked it. You’ll break it._

✵

Kiyoomi leads Atsumu into the bedroom quietly. There is only the dim light of the warm orange lamp on Kiyoomi’s desk, leaving them in softness.

Atsumu stands in the middle of the room, hushed, swaying on his feet. Kiyoomi slowly takes a deep inhale through his nose while his lips place a gentle kiss on Atsumu’s right shoulder. He draws an embroidered line of tender, lingering kisses and feather-light pecks from Atsumu’s shoulder to his collarbone, to his neck, to his jawline, down to his soft chest hair right in the middle. His hands caress Atsumu’s neck, wishing to not break him, to not startle the wild, injured bird in Atsumu – in himself – and feels Atsumu’s hands on his own skin, slipping under the t-shirt and moving along his back.

Kiyoomi wants to go slower. Slower, slower. As slow as he possibly can, to savor this, to kiss Atsumu’s collarbone for an inexhaustible amount of time. Maybe if he did it right, the contact would linger on Atsumu’s skin. But Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to kiss him right, how to touch him in a way that matters, or how to make Atsumu feel the things circulating in Kiyoomi’s veins. He doesn’t know how to make the ghost of his kisses everlast. So, he opts to kiss the skin for as long as he can; he traces fingertips on the collarbones, lowers his lips to Atsumu’s sternum, feels the outline of his torso with the heels of his palms. He slowly sinks to his knees, holding Atsumu from both sides of his hip bones, and lays his forehead on Atsumu’s lower abdomen. He lets out a shaky inhale before tilting his chin forward to press an innocent, appreciative kiss onto the skin, and hears Atsumu sigh out a soft groan.

His pulse is raging again, but it’s different this time. It burns him from the inside, the way he would if his blood was replaced with liquor; all his muscles sizzle and tingle with the warm hiss. He burns when Atsumu pulls him upward, leaning in to kiss him senseless, backing him against the bed to straddle him on it. He burns when Atsumu takes a pause while both of them pant, and the corner of Atsumu’s lips quirk up just a bit to the right, his chin out a little, his brows furrowed just so that they shadow the golden starlight in his eyes.

Kiyoomi knows it’s a trap. He can see that the golden doors will lock right after him, as soon as he enters.

And then, he notices that he would break all his rules rather than live all his life wondering what’s inside.

The burn becomes unbearable when Atsumu rides him in an agonizingly, harrowingly soft pace. Kiyoomi moans in high pitch and sighs with pleasure every time Atsumu bends over to kiss him again, again and again, not chasing an immediate release, not rushing forward.

It’s a break. A dark, silent, warm break from their schedule, an unhurried, observant pause from the old routine, a big, heavy halt to start again, but slower. It hurts, in all its weight and meaning.

Going slower. Here, right _here,_ in this room, on this bed, inside each other.

The golden doors close after him with heavy rumbles, and the lock clicks into place.

It doesn’t sound like the defeated latch of a life sentence. It sounds suspiciously and surprisingly like a welcome. Like a home.

It sounds like relief.

**hold me longer. sake.**

Sake differs from many other drinks due to an interesting fact: her raw material, rice, must be polished before it can be fermented. It’s odd, to have a drink require its material to be burnished beforehand, but sake offers multiple personalities in return: a compassionate companion when you need one, or a reckless and raucous friend if that’s what you ask for. She can hold you warmly and tell you it’s a friendly celebration, or she can throw you off your balance and laugh at you while you try to get up.

She’s a chameleon.

Traditionally imbibed after being gently warmed, warm sake has a unique personality: she feels like smooth, lukewarm compassion gliding down and heating up your body in a loving embrace. She doesn’t offer you much flavor; it’s about the warmth and the relaxation, much like a gentle massage, a tender smile, or a brush of fingers on your cheek.

Chilled sake, on the other hand, is boisterous. She’s determined to show off her flavor, to glide down your throat ever so smoothly in her silk-like texture, to leave you wondering _how_ a drink can be so easy to swallow. She prances around, a lilt of humor and joy to her tone, and pulls you onto the dancefloor with warm fingers around yours.

Some say sake tastes like dry white wine – but there is an earthier element to her, something more grounded that cannot quite be named. Maybe it’s because rice belongs to Japan, or perhaps it’s the other way around, but she feels like home. Even when someone describes her as “similar to this drink”, any careful drinker would taste the nuances that make sake herself. If they cannot tell, then they are not paying enough attention.

Sake does not tell you her secrets immediately after you make acquaintance with her; she never speaks the truth directly, in fact. You hear her chiming aromas and her waterfall silkiness, but it’s filler noise, and if you’re not mindful and observant, you might just as well spend a lifetime without hearing what she actually has to say. Only if you close your eyes while listening, if you dare to ask her the right questions, if you manage to read between the lines, then you can actually reach the essence.

Sake will only reveal herself to you if you pursue her, and accept her with an open heart.

She is not quite this or that. She is authentically what she is: sake.

There is no way around it. She is what she is.

And it takes Atsumu too long to accept that it is, indeed, what it is.

✵

Atsumu thinks that he has never met anyone quite like Kiyoomi before, the thought scattering away as he looks at the spring blossoms of the cherry tree right outside his window, the horse chestnut down the road offering conical flowers to passerbys. Spring is seizing the city with full force, the way thoughts about Kiyoomi do the same thing to Atsumu.

It’s cliché, but it’s true. It’s also odd, because Atsumu cannot name what he’s feeling, what they are doing, or perhaps what they are _not_ doing. For example, Kiyoomi doesn’t rush to the shower within seconds after they come down from the haze anymore. He lets their limbs intertwine, and their chests heave. He lingers, like the smell of cherry blossoms in bloom. He lets Atsumu kiss him longer, not hurrying away from the tender contact for the sake of orgasms. He doesn’t demand to dominate Atsumu all the time, seemingly enjoying the things Atsumu likes to do to him. He still doesn’t talk much about his past, or about the things that matter – he doesn’t really talk, in fact. But he doesn’t walk out of the conversation, either.

He doesn’t try to run away from what they are doing, anymore.

It doesn’t hit Atsumu quite right until after one exhausting match they barely won. It’s Friday, their usual meet-up night in match season. Atsumu doesn’t meet any resistance from himself at the idea of seeing Kiyoomi all alone after a tiring day and a tough win. He wants to check on him anyway, just to make sure his shoulder is fine, since Kiyoomi mentioned a slight twinge after the match. He heads home, showers, makes sure Whiskey has food and water after fondly petting her. He then leaves for Kiyoomi’s place, having no reason to stay at his own flat any longer than necessary.

The first thing Atsumu notices is that they are both quiet; the silence starts from the moment Kiyoomi wordlessly opens the door and it stretches to the dinner they have from the takeout boxes Atsumu brought. Atsumu is used to quietude when it comes to Kiyoomi, but not this much – this is odd. Feels off. Kiyoomi sighs, stretching his shoulder every few minutes while they eat. Atsumu steals glances sneakily and manages to assess him somewhat.

He finally puts his chopsticks down. “Doya need a massage?”

“Hm?” Kiyoomi turns his head to him, apparently spaced out, and refocuses.

“Would a massage help?” Atsumu repeats himself, feeling the anxious need to explain exactly why a touch-averted person should let him touch them for long, _long_ minutes. “I’m not a pro at it, but ‘Samu likes the way I do it. Says it helps the soreness after matches.”

Kiyoomi inhales through his nose, letting it out with a sigh again. “Are you sure you won’t make it worse?”

“I’ll stop whenever ya tell me to,” Atsumu says with a defensive grin, letting his own expression suppress the nervousness. “Whiskey wouldn’t let me hurtcha anyways. One sound of pain, and she’ll have all her lil claws in me to protect ya. Y’know, it’s kinda annoying, considering I’m a single dad but she prefers yer presence.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes with a hidden smile. Atsumu represses the urge to grin wider, sincerely this time.

✵

Kiyoomi lies face-down on his bed on a towel. Atsumu takes a bit of coconut oil from the bowl, and rubs his palms together to melt it. “Can I sit on ya?”

Kiyoomi nods, looking at him sideways with his cheek on the bed. Atsumu feels the bittersweet warmth in his chest at seeing Kiyoomi’s obvious trust, the feeling very similar to sipping warm sake with friends. It’s jolting to see Sakusa Kiyoomi, of all people, let himself be touched more than absolutely necessary, and although they have had many make-out sessions and increasingly longer cuddles, Atsumu cannot shake the feeling that he’s stepping into Kiyoomi’s privacy. Or perhaps stepping over a line, beyond which is hard to come back from. It also is something of an exhibition, to see Kiyoomi’s gorgeous body stretched out in front of him, smooth, pale, defined, cool.

Atsumu bites his lip with caution, shaking his head to refocus on his mission, and slowly moves to straddle Kiyoomi’s lower back. His hands tremble slightly, walking into the ambiguous territory of Touching Sakusa Kiyoomi For Reasons Other Than Sex, and he takes a deep inhale.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he murmurs, and places both palms between Kiyoomi’s shoulder blades, waiting for him to yell or run away.

Kiyoomi does neither.

He only nods.

Atsumu first spreads the oil with self-questioning small motions, then applies some pressure through the tips of his fingers, slowly molding the tension from Kiyoomi’s trapezius muscle. He rolls his hands between Kiyoomi’s neck and shoulder blades. He watches as Kiyoomi’s shoulders tense up with the pressure, then relax back onto the mattress in a second, the motions stirring stress in Atsumu’s stomach. A light groan escapes Kiyoomi’s lips.

Atsumu almost sighs with relief, switching to his thumb to cover less area with more pressure, and slowly, gently kneads the muscle and its knots. Kiyoomi flinches when Atsumu’s thumb accidentally clicks a specific knot, and Atsumu frowns. “Ya okay?”

“Mhm,” Kiyoomi says heavily. “It feels good.”

Atsumu nods in relief and makes sure the knots are softened before taking some more oil. He lightly presses his fingers on Kiyoomi’s neck and the soft curves that stretch towards his shoulders. He smoothly and repetitively applies pressure onto the muscles, the heat of his hands loosening the tight spots. He hears Kiyoomi groan with satisfaction, and feels a smile slowly widen on his face. “That good?”

Kiyoomi makes an approving sound, and Atsumu feels Kiyoomi’s hands curl over Atsumu’s shins, where they rest on the sides of Kiyoomi’s thighs. He draws lazy, random patterns on Atsumu’s skin. The fingers stop moving when Atsumu puts pressure on the muscles, drawing groans and sighs from Kiyoomi. They continue their tracing when Atsumu returns to his normal kneading.

Atsumu holds the pale, swan-like neck between his fingers, gently drawing pressured, vertical lines with his deft fingers to relieve the ache and stress held within Kiyoomi’s tired body. He rests one hand on Kiyoomi’s shoulder, and gently massages both sides of the neck with his thumb and forefinger, up and down. Kiyoomi’s eyes are fluttered shut by this point, so Atsumu has the liberty to watch him – his knifesharp jawline, his stark beauty marks, his offensively long eyelashes. He dips his fingers a little deeper into the hairline and presses on the tension in the ligaments.

He then leaves Kiyoomi’s neck, rubbing his palms together with more oil, and tentatively touches the man’s right shoulder. “Tell me where it hurts.”

Kiyoomi nods lazily. Atsumu can see that he’s drifting off slowly, and hopes that no pain brings him back to awakeness just yet.

He gently starts spreading the oil on the shoulder, focusing on the three main muscles lining it, already easy to identify on Kiyoomi’s defined body. Atsumu begins with slow, careful pressure and runs his fingers through each muscle until Kiyoomi grunts with pain.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Atsumu replies and carefully presses his thumb again along the specific area with the lightest touch he can muster. He allows Kiyoomi’s body and muscles to adjust to the pressure, and slowly increases the strength of his touch on skin, although never going beyond a limit. He hears Kiyoomi’s pained little _ah’s,_ but Kiyoomi never tells him to stop. Atsumu bites his lip again, trying to be gentle enough to not hurt him, but forceful enough to heal him. He shifts a bit on Kiyoomi’s back, leaning forward a little to have better control.

He doesn’t want to abuse the muscle, so he spends several minutes focusing on it and then moves to the surrounding fibers. The strength returns to his fingers again, pressing deep and working the ache out. He shifts to the other shoulder where there is no apparent injury; he doesn’t hold back there and massages the muscles with intensity while Kiyoomi hums happily.

He takes a little more oil into his hands to go over the back muscles once more, and when he confirms that there are no more tight spots to relax, he finally returns to the hurting shoulder. He experimentally presses a thumb on the spot Kiyoomi felt pain the most. “How’s it feelin’?”

“Much better,” Kiyoomi replies sleepily, a purr to his voice.

Atsumu smiles with warmth, the way he always does when he catches Kiyoomi drifting off to sleep. There is something vulnerable to it, something soft, unguarded. Beautiful to watch, really, Kiyoomi trusting him enough to sleep next to him. They’ve shared rooms before, but this is different. This is a choice.

So Atsumu bends over a little more, and presses a soft kiss onto Kiyoomi’s cheek without thinking twice, the logical questioning of what he just did catching up with him once he’s back up. He tries to keep his voice from wavering with _what the fuck did I just do_ and emitting more of an _I totally did that purposefully._ “I’m glad.”

He softly rubs the sore point, and then runs the heels of his palms on the muscles lining Kiyoomi’s spine, trying to distract himself from the very non-friendly and non-sexual kiss he just placed, praying that Kiyoomi doesn’t notice it in his bliss. He feels the man sigh with relief again, and stands on his knees to carry the bowl back into the kitchen and wash his trembling hands.

“‘Tsumu,” Kiyoomi mumbles from the bed, now with his hands beneath the pillow.

“Yeah?” Atsumu replies while shifting from Kiyoomi’s back to the bed, begging to all deities he knows so that Kiyoomi will not ask him _why on earth_ he kissed him on the cheek with no other reason, but then Kiyoomi never asks why –

“Hold me longer,” Kiyoomi says drowsily, rolling his shoulders back once and sighing in relief.

Atsumu stops on his knees, a warmth conquering and tingling his limbs, his scalp, his sternum. He doesn’t reply, maybe because he can’t, and lets Kiyoomi drift softly into the realm of sleep while he sits on his heels on the bed, dazed, looking at the soft and sleepy features, vulnerable, yet still wanting to be _held._ He bites his lower lip in a wide smile, unable to hold the adoration back while looking at Kiyoomi sleeping with the slightest upward curl of his lips. He shakes his head, laughing internally at himself for being so nervous about something when he’s with _him,_ and he walks to the kitchen.

When he returns to the bedroom, he leans on the doorframe, watching Kiyoomi’s oiled, glistening back rising and falling steadily. The request ringing in his ears feels like the moment Kiyoomi kissed him those months ago, the fruity taste of white wine on his tongue, his strong grip anchoring Atsumu.

But is it?

Because Atsumu is now touching Kiyoomi for different reasons. It’s not the brute lust haunting his motions anymore; his touch now has other worlds hidden within. The taste Kiyoomi leaves in his mouth is different, now. Still very similar to the first time he kissed Atsumu after the party, but deeper, like the silky taste of sake, like the gentle touch of Atsumu’s fingers over Kiyoomi’s slippery back, the way Kiyoomi hummed at the contact, the absent flinching away from the touch.

_Hold me longer._

That feels like… something. Something Atsumu cannot name. It’s not similar to anything he’s experienced before, so he decides it’s a new, unexplored thing, something unique to its own and warm and happy.

It is what it is, and there’s no name for it. Yet.

Well, there's no rush to give it one, too.

He softly settles on the bed, and Kiyoomi’s eyelids flutter open slightly. He gives Atsumu a lazy, satisfied smile, totally blissed out, and shuffles closer to him. Atsumu places one hand gently on his shoulder, intertwines his leg with Kiyoomi’s relaxed limbs, and closes his eyes, listening to the steady breaths of Kiyoomi and letting himself drift away as well.

**stay with me. rakı.**

Rakı is an interesting spirit. It is almost impossible to explain how it feels to someone who has never tasted it before: a drink often made from grapes and usually flavored with anise. The smell and taste are incredibly distinctive due to the anise, and the spirit is too intense to be drunk on its own. So, it is usually poured into the rakı glass up to the single-line or the double-line, and then cold water is added to the transparent liquor, turning it into a milky-white drink. It is often called _the lion’s milk_ due to this color.

In Turkey, the home of the drink, there is a long-living saying: _the drinker must know the ways of rakı._

First and foremost, rakı is meant to be sipped slowly. If you don’t respect the tradition and drink it fast, you will be drained of all the water in your body in the morning with a headache that cracks your skull open.

There is a _reason_ why tradition calls for unhurried drinking.

Secondly, tradition offers a “meze” table or seafood alongside it – meze are multiple plates of hot or cold dishes, not to be a meal on their own, but to become a rich table of tastes when they come together. The main point is to gather a wide range of options, but they lack significance without the presence of rakı. The table gains meaning with its people and their drinks, and most importantly, the conversation circulating the table.

This brings us to the rule above all else: rakı is supposed to be drunk with friends. That is the only most important requirement – you cannot ask someone to buy you a bottle of it if you’re not offering to drink it with them, for example. Rakı asks to be shared. It is not a drink of a lonely, solitary night, the way whiskey can be; it belongs to a loud table, cheering friends, heartbroken stories, and bonding. It is a sincere spirit; it calls for companionship, vulnerability, and warmth.

This concept carries itself into a saying in the Turkish language. The phrase is uttered while the rakı glasses are clinked together for a toast:

_“cam cama değil, can cana”_

It means “not glass to glass, but life to life.”

The glasses resonate with vibration, and they bridge lives together.

Rakı is an intimate drink. It’s about _touching_ each other, of being pieces of a whole _together,_ of happiness and sorrow. Most of all, it’s about companionship.

Kiyoomi thinks that maybe, this was what he missed all along.

✵

The year passes slowly, through the dreadful storms of winter, the heavy rain showers of spring, and finally settles at the gentle warmth of late May. The last matches of the season are approaching fast, and as expected, Coach Foster asks them to gather around after an exhausting day of training.

“We’re flying to Kyoto first, then Tokyo,” he says, giving them stapled sheets of paper containing the details, “in two weeks for the final matches, and exactly four weeks from now the season is actually over. Get some rest. You deserved it.”

Kiyoomi tucks the paper neatly, ignoring his raucous teammates discussing their roommate arrangements, especially the one he’s paired up with – of course, him again, like it always has been.

Following a shower, he quietly collects his bag and steps outside first, inhaling the fresh, gentle smell of late-spring blossoms. May in Osaka is always beautiful, no matter how much Kiyoomi tries to not get attached to the city, but today he’s feeling quite melancholy, so the beauty of late-spring flows freely into him. It’s refreshing to walk outside now, the sakura blossoms still shuffling with ease in the wind, petals dancing around in the air before graciously landing on the floor. He walks to his car silently, thinking of how things were, a year ago, before the Olympics.

Atsumu has become a part of his routine, and it’s no longer in the _I see him every day, and I somehow stand it_ way – Kiyoomi now waits for Fridays with excitement. The weeks when they cannot meet drag longer, and the weeks one of them unexpectedly ends up in the other’s apartment more often are bright.

He hums in thought, carefully stepping with measure between the lines of pavement stones.

It’s clear: he’s grown attached. He’s always been someone doomed to understand himself a little too well. He actually should have seen this coming, considering he walked into this expecting this possible outcome, but he also –

The sudden thought of asking Atsumu to stay with him through the summer fleets through his mind.

Then it abruptly comes back, stronger, and slams his chest in repetitive raps.

Kiyoomi almost stops in his tracks, raising his gaze to the dust-pink blossoms with disbelief.

_Wait._

_Fuck._

He takes a deep inhale through his nose, trying to flicker away the thought. It doesn’t work.

Panic starts to seize his chest at the ridiculous, unrealistic fantasies his thoughts are insisting on. They started this relationship, this _arrangement,_ because it was convenient, and now Kiyoomi finds himself asking for a bend in the conditions to keep it going…? And?

 _Then what?_ he scolds his thoughts, trying to knock some form of sensibility into them.

The thing is, Kiyoomi’s not stupid.

Obviously.

He was there throughout the entire thing. He watched himself falling into the routine so seamlessly, too. He watched himself get comfortable.

But he didn’t expect this desire for _more_. Although, now that he thinks of it, he should have. It’s shocking to actually reach this point, to finally catch a thought in his head that gives him away, despite his intense wishful thinking that it would only stay as attachment and not become… _this._

He knew, from the first day he met Atsumu, that he’s exceedingly, disturbingly easy to love. He had predicted it would feel like a wildfire kissing him, he had guessed it would be electrifying to touch him. He knew that watching Atsumu was like watching a grandiose figure move forward in a parade when you’re just merely a bystander, but he didn’t know how being swept away felt – within the noise, the glamour, the excitement of the thing itself.

Kiyoomi has been used to being a mundane stranger in Atsumu’s life, just admiring the way the man exists, but now… now there’s more. He finds himself asking for more, and that. Cannot. End. Well. The attachment is alright – he’s long accepted the fact that watching Atsumu, losing himself in the way Atsumu lives this life, is a habit, it’s fine, it’s whatever. It’s irreversible, anyway. Kiyoomi’s attention is drawn to him no matter what, and some part of him always yearns for him, and it’s been long since Kiyoomi accepted this. No, really. He accepted it and gritted his teeth through it. But now, with this change, this simple, greedy desire for _more,_ everything is different, and Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to do with it.

What does Kiyoomi want to keep about him, he wonders quietly. Or should he be wondering this at all? Or should he just bask in the glow of this feeling? Should he analyze this? Feel this? Let it devour him? Does he try to control it, or does he just try to co-exist?

Previously he accepted his situation. Embraced it, even. He was fine living alongside it. But now, he notices, he sleeps, eats, lives with it. It’s like an incessant, merciless background noise: Atsumu, Atsumu, _Atsumu._ It's his eyes, the way the wind shuffles his dirty blond bangs, it's the way Kiyoomi can swear he looks like a poem under the moonlight. He can't explain this, and he's not sure if he dares to try anyway. It is what it is.

But at the same time, what the fuck is it? Why does it not let Kiyoomi be? Why does it make a nest in his hair and never stop singing? Kiyoomi is meticulous and methodical; he does not act on whims, or do impulsive things. Or at least… he didn’t use to. He remembers the way he watched Atsumu that night while sipping whiskey, or how his whole body was electrified when Atsumu asked him to kiss him while he was fucked out of his brains on that party night, or the way he woke up to Atsumu’s tender embrace after he gave Kiyoomi a massage. He doesn't know what rules he had before all of them were broken, and yet, before he can find out, there is the feral grin, the lacking accent, the childish huffs at the center of it all.

He hurts. Loving Atsumu hurts.

He would know, wouldn’t he?

It’s a long-known fact; having him within an arm’s reach, but never being able to touch him truly, in the way that matters. Being closer to him hurts more and less in an enigmatic but perfectly understandable way, and any change in this situation will bring him more pain than Kiyoomi’s fathomed, he knows that. Asking for more will destroy whatever delicate balance they’ve struck. Asking for more will inevitably end in destruction, and Kiyoomi doesn’t want to return to old routines – Friday nights alone, no more fire on his tongue, one whiskey glass in the sink.

And yet, despite knowing what this will bring him, he can’t think of anything else. More. More of what they have. More of what they _can_ have.

He mulls over whether he can ignore the thought now, even though he knows the answer already. He inhales deeply, trying to let the blushed spring air calm him, but his chest is compressing and the arrival of the previously impending doom is overwhelming.

With one more look at the blossom-scattered sky, he purses his lips with determination. Fine. It happened. He can carry it inside. He can be alone in a relationship of two, silent with his desires until he suffocates and it’s over. It’s not like he isn’t familiar to the feeling or the probable pathway.

✵

He fails.

It must be the way Atsumu looks at him in the bed.

They are entangled after the third round of sex they greedily went through, and Kiyoomi is well and truly exhausted – it took both of them more than an hour to orgasm this last time.

He can feel the ache in his joints and bones.

They have practice tomorrow.

Atsumu’s arm is over Kiyoomi’s chest.

And Kiyoomi wants… _more._

How does one cleanse himself off of the memory of another? Kiyoomi idly wonders how it would be if he could go back to before he knew how Atsumu’s touch feels, before he knew how his lips taste. That ignorance and the blessing of the unknown would have hurt less, but Kiyoomi cannot find it in himself to wish that upon them. He would prefer the memories and the suffering alongside them over anything else, in some fucked-up, masochistic way. The only way he’s known, if that contributes anything.

He knows he never liked playing with fire, because it’s always harder to heal what is burned than to fix what is broken. Yet here he is, letting a man of flames blaze him thoroughly until he’s an incoherent mess.

Atsumu slowly stretches – completely unaware – and takes his arm off Kiyoomi’s chest. He stands up and walks to the bathroom, starting the shower. Kiyoomi stares at the ceiling, lying on his back, fingertips idly tracing the indents of bite marks on his skin. It’s Thursday. Atsumu just appeared at the door and slammed him onto the wall as soon as Kiyoomi’s eyes met his, and now they’re here.

It’s not a surprising course of action since there hasn’t been much talking at all throughout their trysts; any words shared are about the activity at hand, nothing more, nothing straying beyond their status quo. Kiyoomi figures today wasn’t much different either, aside from the occasional “Ya still wanna go, Omi-omi?” he remembers and the ludicrous laugh before “God, Omi, greedy arentcha?” ringing in his ears.

It’s not like Kiyoomi wants to talk. He wants to fuck or to be fucked until he forgets _how to_ goddamn talk, and the latter is what he has gotten in the past hours, but now… now, the silence is tipping his world sideways, and his feelings are clawing at him without rest. He can’t stop the haunting background noise in his head, repetitive of the one name he only mutters in bed. _Stop,_ he wants to yell, his palms pressing on his temples. _Stop. Stop. Move on. Go away._

He doesn’t move, feeling the semen on his chest dry with sticky firmness. He could have joined Atsumu in the shower, it’s not something rare, but now… it’s over the line. Now, it hurts to be so close to him without the distraction of sex, now it hurts to think about him, now it _hurts_ to notice every small detail – Atsumu not calling him into the bathroom, Atsumu not kissing him after sex, Atsumu not lingering the way he usually, annoyingly does. Kiyoomi bites his tongue until he can taste the blood, an attempt to not yell or cry. He’s laid bare, right there, on his own white bed sheets, in between the claws, potentially shredded with one motion. Does he move ahead? Does he let the contact – the contact he watched progressing from _none_ to _casual,_ and now to _craved_ – sink him further into this feeling? Does he try to back out?

Well. No use of considering the impossible now. He either stays right where he is and waits for the current to inevitably wash him down deeper, or lets himself go and be carried faster. Kiyoomi’s breath is lead, compression on his chest, tears threatening to burn his eyes. Not now.

_But if not now, then when?_

The thoughts inside his head clash so loudly that he thinks he’ll go deaf. He maybe hopes.

Atsumu comes back into the room, a towel sloppily tied around his waist while ruffling his hair with another. Kiyoomi doesn’t look at him. That hurts, too, now.

“That was one ambitious round,” Atsumu says airily, chuckling afterwards as he gathers his clothes from where they were thrown off. “The marks on my back will take time to heal, Omi.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t reply, but that doesn’t seem to faze Atsumu. He finds his t-shirt, mumbles over some thread getting undone, and then sits on the edge of the bed to put his socks on. He grabs his pants and jumps within them – too tight jeans – and sits on the edge of the bed. But when he’s done fiddling around his clothing, he doesn’t move to get up or move along. Kiyoomi finally lets his gaze flow towards him, and sees that Atsumu is staring at the wall across from him with his elbows on his thighs.

“Omi,” Atsumu says, slowly turning to him.

The following silence is suffocating. Nervous. Taut. The knife’s edge threatens to cut Kiyoomi’s skin vertically in a warm, filled bathtub.

_Don’t ask. Please don’t ask, because I don’t know what I’ll –_

“Everythin’ okay?” Atsumu stares at him with vivid gold eyes.

Kiyoomi hears the porcelain shatter inside him.

His throat is knotted. It holds his voice back from gushing out in screams. His hands are on the pillow under his head, and it suddenly feels so vulnerable – so terrifyingly naked, right there for Atsumu to stab him with any word, any gaze. He wants to curl up in a ball with layers and layers of blankets upon him, to not see the light outside anymore. Warm, damp breaths in the darkness. He lowers his hands towards his hips, but that doesn’t help enough. Unable to scatter the unsettling vulnerability away, he sits on the bed with his back against the headboard, knees pulled in just a little.

That feels better.

All the while he refuses to meet Atsumu’s eyes, because it feels dangerously close to the tipping point now. The cherry blossoms remind him of things he wants to forget about, like the way he let Atsumu kiss him one year ago, the way they started this haunting routine a few months after, the way he signed up to his own undoing. But it’s too late now.

It’s been too late for a long time.

“Omi,” Atsumu repeats, his voice uncharacteristically soft. Kiyoomi doesn’t raise his eyes to him. With all the endorphin and adrenaline gone, he feels empty. The void threatens to swallow him whole again, as soon as Atsumu’s out that door.

He hears the shuffling, and then the bed dips next to him. He turns his head slightly to the right to see that Atsumu is sitting on his shins, looking at him with worry. The gold sparkles.

“Did I hurt you?” Atsumu asks softly.

 _Don’t be compassionate now,_ Kiyoomi wants to say. _Do you think you just started?_

Or maybe, _why are you asking this now?_ But Kiyoomi never asks _why_ and there is no reason to start today.

Or perhaps, _no, I’m fine. Why’d you ask?_

Honestly, even a simple _no_ would be sufficient.

But Atsumu looks at him, golden, lukewarm. Vulnerable. Quiet. It reminds Kiyoomi of nights he woke up next to Atsumu and had the chance to watch him under the low-dipping moonlight through his window. There is a softness reserved for watching him like that, a drooling, mumbling mess, but a real, truly raw resting mess of a man so exuberant. And now – now Atsumu has stolen the softness from the night, and his own expression is bleeding moonlight, suddenly leaving Kiyoomi even more naked. His ears almost don’t catch his own words.

“When?” His voice is threatening to crumble down.

“When?” Atsumu echoes, at a loss at the question, honest worry glimmering in his eyes. _“When_ did I hurt you?”

Kiyoomi blinks once. Twice. _How can you not know?_ He counts eight breaths. Doesn’t take his gaze away from the golden lava in Atsumu’s eyes.

He remembers the whiskey glasses.

He doesn’t know what his face is showing, but Atsumu exhales deeply, brows furrowed with doubt and unease. It looks alien on him, the lack of self-assured stupidity. Kiyoomi finds himself strongly wishing to go back to normal again. But which normal? The one before the Olympics or the one before the cherry blossoms?

He knows he’s a deer in headlights. He knows he’s dead on the tracks. But for the sake of his own life he cannot open his mouth and pretend now. Not now. Not here. Not like this.

“At times,” he mutters, some last crumble of self-preservation in an attempt of damage control.

Maybe he expects a snarky laugh, some comment about how fragile he is, how he can’t even handle a few smacks, because Atsumu is shallow like that. Because the world revolves around Atsumu, and the snake that doesn’t bite him can live for a thousand years, and Kiyoomi is a pale blue dot in Atsumu’s vast cosmos.

But Atsumu’s mouth curls downward, and he reaches for Kiyoomi’s hand, only to reluctantly curl his fingers into his palm mid-air and replace his hand back onto his thigh.

“How can I change that?” he hears Atsumu ask, self-conscious, worried. Sincere. Terrifying.

Kiyoomi looks at Atsumu again, and for the first time in the year they spent fucking the living daylights out of each other, he watches Atsumu not trying to fill a deafening silence with white noise, but actually listen.

_(Why does it hurt more, now?)_

_(How does it hurt more, now?)_

His golden eyes are careful, on Kiyoomi. Quiet. Open. Beautiful.

It is suddenly one of the things that make him so lovable.

It is one of the things that make him so unbearably, mercilessly lovable.

And then Kiyoomi decides in a split second that maybe, just _maybe,_ being forever marked and changed by this was what he needed all along.

He reaches out with his hand, weakly grabbing the hem of Atsumu’s t-shirt, and Atsumu remains silent. Kiyoomi raises his eyes from the hem to Atsumu’s eyes, his gaze so unsure and flickering.

“Atsumu,” he says softly, afraid of breaking, his voice wavering despite his efforts against it. All he can say without stripping all his emotional armor off completely, all he can say without crumbling is this. “Stay with me.”

Atsumu lets out a cathartic exhale, and his shoulders sag with… relief… disappointment? Kiyoomi’s eyes flicker between Atsumu’s eyes, trying to understand, cursing his lack of control, cursing his emotions, hating himself more and _hating_ –

“Thought ya’d never ask, Omi-kun,” Atsumu says finally, a small smile forming on his lips. Kiyoomi lets go of a breath he didn’t know was trapped in his lungs. Atsumu leans in, placing one tender hand on Kiyoomi’s forehead and another on Kiyoomi’s hand still on the hem of Atsumu’s t-shirt, and Kiyoomi, for once, acknowledges how quickly his touch soothes him when his eyelids flutter shut involuntarily.

“Of course I’ll stay,” Atsumu says, fondly, his honeyed gaze honest and loving.

Kiyoomi finds himself mirroring the expression when he opens his eyes again, warmth melting and flooding in his ribcage.

**love me. beer.**

Beer has a long history, stretching thousands of years into the past.

It is one of the oldest drinks in humankind’s history, originating approximately the same time when cereal and grains were first harvested. It has been used in rituals, festivals and daily life ever since; it is the world’s most popular alcoholic drink, something you can find anywhere if you look, sometimes underrated due to its vast availability. It existed before there was a name for it, the way most emotions have.

Beer was used in the making of the Great Pyramids of Giza, back in about the 3000s in Egypt. The workers were under heavy conditions of heat and intense physical labor, and they were paid in beer as a refreshment and of course, as nutrition. It is a tasty drink but more importantly it feeds well; people lived on it, and it helped them survive.

An interesting historical note is that beer was primarily brewed by women called _alewives_ mainly in Mesopotamia since it first appeared. The roots of this tradition run deep, and the tradition continued until the Black Death, though some carried it into the future nonetheless. Alewives had festivals in the spring to celebrate the harvest, which was the love nature gave them back for planting seeds into the earth and feeding them with water. They would brew their beer, and hang newly blossomed spring branches on their doors to announce the new batch, to welcome everybody to come inside and taste it.

Beer, with one look at its history, has been and will keep being rich and nurturing. It’s celebratory, used to welcome the spring. It’s ritualistic, used to make sacrifices. It’s casual and available, used to feed the pyramid workers. It’s calm, familiar, cheap, and safe; it carries a sense of belonging and brotherhood in its presence. If you just like the taste, then it allows you to have it to a certain extent without harming you. If you want to get drunk on it, it wants your effort and dedication to drinking. It’s a friendly drink, only asking things from you if you make a claim first.

And when it asks, you give it all you have.

✵

“This place is a mess.”

“So grateful, Omi– _ow,_ what’s _that_ for–”

Kiyoomi lowers the roll of magazine he used to whack Atsumu on the head, and looks around once again to completely register the absolute chaos Atsumu is living in. He can practically feel the annoying crumbs digging into his skin from just looking at the sofa, the sides of it scratched and frayed by a very evident cat – Whiskey – perched atop it. Which, of course, explains the amount of fur lying around in the house, on the unwiped counter, the armchairs, the carpet. Kiyoomi squints to make sure what he’s seeing is a hairball at the corner. The painting on the wall is so crooked it might as well be vertical instead of horizontal.

He turns to Atsumu when he manages to pry his eyes away from the dish mountain on the counter. “This is a fucking disaster, Miya.”

“Okay, I might’ve skipped the last cleaning day,” Atsumu admits, still with the crooked grin on his face. Kiyoomi judges him loudly with one look and does not feel even slightly bad about it.

“Fine. I skipped a few.”

“I’m not sitting anywhere until you clean this up,” Kiyoomi announces firmly. “And if it’s not done in,” he checks his watch, “3 hours, I’m leaving for Bokuto’s.”

Atsumu throws his hands up with an exhausted huff. “Listen, I ain’t the one who came uncalled one random afternoon–”

“A _pipe_ broke in my house, Miya.”

“And ya’d rather be here than in a flooded bathroom, so shut it,” Atsumu shoots back snidely.

“I’m strongly considering going back.”

“At least help,” Atsumu demands, completely ignoring the last statement. “There’s no way I can handle all of this in three hours.”

“Fine, but I will only clean the living room. You get the dishes. I’m not touching those.”

“Fine.”

There is a silence among them while Kiyoomi turns around to determine where he should start from. Vacuuming the sofa, armchairs and the carpet seems like a good idea. Whiskey stares at him with human-like eyes, bright green and unnerving. Kiyoomi stops himself from making a face at her.

“Give me the vacuum.”

“I gotta find it first,” he hears Atsumu murmur as he turns around and rushes towards a room. Multiple clanking and shuffling sounds ensue, and Kiyoomi finds himself taking a deep breath in. This will take more than three hours.

✵

Whiskey hisses and runs away to hide somewhere when he turns on the machine, and Kiyoomi carefully vacuums the sofa and the various other fabric-covered seats in the living room with peace. Well, it’s a stretch to call it “peace” as Kiyoomi horrifiedly finds several chocolate wrappers, beer bottle lids and a variety of other litter snugly hidden between the cushions. It takes quite an effort to cleanse the sofa and the carpet from fur and god knows what else, but Kiyoomi finally manages, and sits down on the least worn armchair with a huff.

Atsumu is done battling the dishes, and now there is music and humming coming from the bedroom. Kiyoomi considers checking on him, but today has been rough and he doesn’t have the heart to see what disaster is going on there. Waking up to an awful smelling house is not something Kiyoomi is used to, and it has taken all his self-control to not flee immediately once he saw the state of his bathroom. He’d done the responsible thing and called to have the pipe fixed, but now, displaced from the comfort of his clean, safe, normally un-flooded home, he finds himself … here. He vaguely wonders if he’s done the right thing by coming to Atsumu’s – he’s sure it was the most _logical_ thing, but Atsumu is leaving for Hyogo in a few days and Kiyoomi can feel the unexpected anxiety of being a last-minute burden to him. On a related thought, the season is just over, and Kiyoomi should actually call his parents soon to tell them he’s not coming.

He wonders distantly if he really should stay in Osaka. But if there is anything he’s sure of, it’s that he cannot bear to stay in his family’s house in this mental state – vulnerable, and therefore potentially too unguarded for their continual criticism. Visiting will just make things worse. He sighs deeply.

Atsumu enters the living room, wearing his sweatpants only, his torso glistening with sweat. “Ya done with the vacuum?”

“Yes,” Kiyoomi replies. “I’m not helping with anything else.”

“Ya already made that clear, sittin’ all pretty and delicate on the armchair like it’s gonna bite yer ass off,” Atsumu mumbles, trying to unplug the machine.

“This house should be classified as a level 4 hazard zone,” Kiyoomi states indifferently, watching Atsumu’s shoulders and back muscles flex under the sheen, and he feels his stomach do an anticipatory twist at the view presented to him. “I cannot be expected to be comfortable in a garbage dumpster.”

Atsumu turns around to bite back, but catches him staring instead.

“Ya watchin’ me?” he asks with a sly smirk on his mouth, completely distracted.

Kiyoomi tilts his chin up defensively but then slightly smirks back, deciding to play along. “Good view. Can’t blame me.”

Atsumu drops the cable onto the floor, and slowly walks towards him. Kiyoomi shuffles on the armchair, suddenly a bundle of nerves, but as soon as Atsumu reaches out and touches his cheek with his fingertips, relief soothes his chest.

Atsumu sits on his lap sideways, and tilts Kiyoomi’s chin up with his index finger while leaning in to kiss him, this time triggering another kind of excitement, a very welcome and giddy one. Atsumu hovers above his lips, chuckling lightly when Kiyoomi makes an annoyed sound of want, and then he kisses him so gently that Kiyoomi wonders if it’s alright to feel so elevated by such a small, tender piece of contact.

When will kissing Atsumu become something casual and not… this, Kiyoomi vaguely wonders. When will it not hurt to touch him like this? Because it aches, knowing how beautiful he is, knowing that Kiyoomi is the one who gets to touch this man like this, knowing that Kiyoomi is the one who gets to see Atsumu’s blissed out expression when he nuzzles Kiyoomi’s chest. It should be celebratory, but there’s always that persistent heartbreak at seeing something so beautiful that you’re afraid you’ll never see anything of this caliber ever again, or feel this way again, after you surrender to loving something this much.

Kiyoomi snaps out of his thoughts when Atsumu bites his lower lip with a definite grin, and he lets out an unrestrained moan. It becomes something more heated when Atsumu tangles his fingers in Kiyoomi’s hair, and Kiyoomi’s hands dance on the sweaty plane of Atsumu’s back, pulling him closer, disregarding his thoughts and focusing on how he can kiss Atsumu longer, longer, _longer_ in the bed. The probably disastrous, filthy bed. Kiyoomi considers doing it on the couch, but then Atsumu groans lightly into his mouth, licking deeper to explore him more, leaving behind no coherent thoughts in Kiyoomi’s mind.

“We gotta clean,” Atsumu murmurs when he pulls back, their foreheads pressed together. “My friend told me he’d leave if I didn’t.”

“Don’t take your friend so seriously,” Kiyoomi mutters despite the fondness rising inside him, and he can’t help leaning in once more for another kiss.

“I’ll take him whichever way he asks me to,” Atsumu replies with a playful gleam in his eyes, and gives a peck, only to leave Kiyoomi hanging before he stands up. “I’ll settle for no less than perfect.”

“Ambitious,” Kiyoomi says with slight annoyance, pouting like a child whose candy has been taken away, though he cannot help but revel in the emotions stirring at the unconditional acceptance Atsumu just provided him, a warmth conquering his limbs and tingling his sternum.

It’s not like he’s wasting a chance of having sex with Atsumu – he knows from experience that Atsumu likes to kiss for hours, even if it doesn’t reach the bedroom. He also knows that Atsumu will sit on his lap and kiss him anytime he wants, and it’s too often an occurrence now to not be interrupted by daily life activities, but still, he can’t shake the need to _marvel_ at it everytime it happens. But still, Kiyoomi wants to kiss him more.

But still, Atsumu is addictive.

“Omi-omi,” Atsumu teases him, clearly reading his face. “If ya wanna kiss me more, help me clean.”

“Fine,” Kiyoomi surrenders while standing up. “I’m not touching the bathroom.”

“Then vacuum the floors,” Atsumu replies, motioning to the machine resting in the middle of the room. “I’ll get the bathrooms.”

✵

It turns out that the problem with Atsumu’s cleaning is not that he is too lazy to do it, it’s that he doesn’t know what to do – the man doesn’t see most of the mess as a problem, and therefore cannot fix them.

“Atsumu, the painting is still crooked,” Kiyoomi repeats for the third time.

“Is it better now?” Atsumu asks distractedly, both hands on the sides of the frame.

His lack of resistance towards Kiyoomi’s directions is suddenly so adorable that Kiyoomi has to take a sharp breath in to suppress it. Atsumu glances at him with worry.

“A little more to the right,” Kiyoomi replies while trying to keep his voice even, and then tilts his head. “That’s too much. A little left.”

Atsumu hums, turning back and finally balancing the painting. “Good?”

“Yes.”

Or there is the fact that Atsumu does not treat dust as a problem.

“Atsumu, wipe the counters.”

“Why? They’re clean.”

“There is at least one finger thick dust on them, how the hell are they clean?”

“Omi-omi, there is no food on them, so they are _clean.”_

“Atsumu. Wipe the counters.”

“Fine.”

Kiyoomi hides his smile in an eyeroll when his back is turned.

Or there is the fact that Atsumu thinks the spider chilling in his closet has the right to live.

“Atsumu, take it out.”

“Omi-omi, he has a family!”

“It’s probably a she. Take her out.”

“So _heartless,_ she’s here to feed her children, y’know spiders are very helpful–”

Kiyoomi smacks him on the head, although fondly. “Take her _out.”_

Atsumu sighs in defeat.

Kiyoomi suppresses a smile.

Or there is the fact that Atsumu does not respect the concept of laundry whatsoever.

“Atsumu, what is this?”

“Those are my clothes, Omi-omi. Wanna wear some?”

“No,” Kiyoomi clarifies, although his reply would certainly be different under better circumstances. He motions to the absolutely disastrous pile of crumpled clothes in the finally spider-free wardrobe. “What the _fuck_ is this? Why aren’t they folded?”

“Laundry steals time and for what?” Atsumu defends himself, one fist dramatically raised into the air. “Only to get dirty and washed and folded again!”

“That is called maintenance,” Kiyoomi replies, disgusted but losing the stern edge to his tone, because that is so… Atsumu.

“They straighten out when I wear them anyway,” Atsumu says with a shrug.

“Atsumu. You’re not five. Fold your laundry.”

_“Fine.”_

By the time they’re done the sun is setting, painting the living room in shades of fumed rose pink, bright orange, and slices of lively yellow. Atsumu sits on the sofa with a heavy sigh, and Kiyoomi follows him after placing both beer bottles onto the now-wiped, clean coffee table.

Atsumu stretches his back and then his shoulders, and takes a look around the room with a beer in his hand. “Wow. I’ve been here for years, but it feels like home _now.”_

Then he’s silent for a good second, his golden gaze studying Kiyoomi in detail. Kiyoomi feels a smile forming on his lips, looking back at him. He’s about to say something regarding the comfort of having a clean place when Atsumu beats him to it. “I’m not sure if it’s because of the cleanin’ or because yer here.”

Kiyoomi looks at Atsumu’s soft, balmy expression with surprise, and the affection rising inside him swallows him whole in a split second, leaving behind only the impulsive need of yelling his affection from rooftops. He bites his lip, suddenly fiddling with his fingers and feeling reluctant to ask for it, but then Atsumu leans sideways and places a warm, calloused palm over his hands, and Kiyoomi has no other option. He raises his gaze from his fingers to the golden eyes staring at him, hoping that Atsumu’s obedience to his directions will not fail him this time. “Can I ask you to do one more thing?”

“I thought we were done?” Atsumu asks, brows rising at the sudden mood shift. “But sure. Whatever ya want.”

Kiyoomi barely holds back a smile, very unsuccessfully at that, and asks with a voice much softer than he knew he was capable of, considering his heart is in his throat, his hands are growing cold by the second, and hope flutters in his stomach like a dangerous, gorgeous butterfly. “Love me, Atsumu.”

Atsumu’s face splits into a sunny smile that puts the sunset to shame, and Kiyoomi suddenly notices the excellence of his question and the ridiculousness of his tension – the smile, the golden starlight shining in Atsumu’s eyes, the way the corners of his eyes crinkle, they are worth it – and Atsumu tilts his head, squeezing Kiyoomi’s fingers in his palm. “I already do, Omi.”

Then he leans in to kiss him, and Kiyoomi kisses him back breathlessly, tasting the familiar, friendly, loving taste of cold beer on Atsumu’s tongue. The kiss adds such dimension to the familiar taste that it leaves Kiyoomi wondering how many mundane things Atsumu rendered meaningful, the way he just did.

He thinks he can get used to this.

✵

Being around Atsumu is as good as having sex with him. Actually, it’s better.

Kiyoomi accompanies him when he wants to visit Osamu’s shop and bully his brother, completely well-intentioned, and finds himself smiling when Atsumu latches onto Osamu with full force (which shocks Osamu, but he manages to keep a straight face while looking at Kiyoomi.) He drives Atsumu often to the new cafés and ramen shops he wants to see, and they start a list of the places they visited with ratings on them. The only place with a lower rating from Atsumu is the café where a waiter spilled hot latte on Kiyoomi. He doesn’t ask why when Atsumu declares they’ll never go there again, but smiles softly while looking at the steering wheel.

Atsumu’s trip to Hyogo gets postponed, and Kiyoomi refuses to ask why, again, though this time he gets the answer in the shower a few days later.

As he scrubs his scalp with the shampoo, he hears Atsumu humming to an untitled tune. The melody stops abruptly with Atsumu cursing, and Kiyoomi slides open the door to look at what’s happening. He blinks methodically with water streaming down his face, trying to make sense of the scene.

Atsumu’s feet are in the sink, and he is sitting on the counter facing the mirror. He looks, in all honesty, ridiculous. He’s apparently bleaching his roots, evident from the oddly parted hair and the bowl in his hand, and Kiyoomi takes a moment to just look at Atsumu in all ridiculousness and still love him _so much._ How can someone look so charming while sitting _in_ the sink? How can this be cozy, while he’s in the shower and Atsumu’s _bleaching his roots?_

His brows rise when he gazes lower and sees the stain on Atsumu’s black t-shirt.

Atsumu turns his head to him with a grimace. “I loved this t-shirt.”

“Well,” Kiyoomi replies, humor evident in his voice despite his swelling heart. “You two match now. Both bleached.”

“Fuck you,” Atsumu spits with a lopsided grin, and returns to the mirror in his ridiculous position.

“Why are you… sitting like that?” Kiyoomi asks, ignoring the drops of soapy water dripping from him onto the feet towel in front of the shower.

A why, for the first time.

“Wanna be close to ya,” Atsumu replies mindlessly, parting another tuft to reach the roots. “Exact same reason why I won’t go to Hyogo soon.”

Kiyoomi freezes, blinking away the water from his eyes, a warmth completely unrelated to the shower’s hot steam blossoming in his chest and tingling at his ribs. So, that’s how ‘why’s go, then, when they are asked and answered. Like a gutpunch. A loving, intense, warm one.

Atsumu glances at him and does a double take when he sees the look in Kiyoomi’s eyes. “What?”

“You’re not going to Hyogo, because…?” It comes out unsure. Fittingly so.

“Don’t get in over yer head, Omi-kun. I’m stayin’ because yer shower pressure’s better.”

Kiyoomi raises a brow despite the firm grip of pliers around his heart and the flowerbed blossoming in his airway, and he decides to not push further, changing the subject to something lighter. “Then why didn’t you join me in the shower?”

“A man has his needs, Omi-kun,” Atsumu huffs indignantly. “My roots were terrible.”

Kiyoomi fails to hold it back and laughs softly at the familiarity, at _them,_ before sliding the door back and resuming his shower, trying to understand what to do with the sudden blossoms in his chest.

“This color better fit my current hair,” Atsumu says doubtfully after a few minutes, nearing the end of Kiyoomi’s shower. “I’m not sure if I mixed the things correctly.”

“I could have done it for you.”

“Next time, Omi-omi.”

“Did you at least weigh the ingredients?”

“Nah. Eye measurement is superior.”

Kiyoomi scoffs at that. So Atsumu. So lovable. “Come and wash your hair before it gets any worse. We’ll fix it together tonight.”

“But Omi,” Atsumu whines. “I’m almost halfway.”

“Then wash it quickly so it doesn’t settle, you moron,” Kiyoomi replies.

There is a hesitant silence, and there is no doubt that Atsumu is eyeing his hair carefully in the mirror. Then he sighs. “Fine. Scoot over.”

Kiyoomi hears Atsumu putting down the bowl and undressing, then the shower door slides open and he hops in.

Kiyoomi holds the shower head and starts to wet Atsumu’s hair, scrunching his nose at the intense chemical smell. Atsumu blindly reaches for the shampoo bottle but bumps into Kiyoomi’s shoulder instead. Kiyoomi’s lips curl into a gentle smile. “Don’t fiddle. I’ll wash your hair.”

Atsumu smiles back with his eyes closed. Kiyoomi looks at him; all golden, sparkling and lukewarm to the touch. The relentless warmth conquers him again, and he feels like he’s free falling from where he stands – airborne and grounded at the same time. Atsumu is the same as always: golden and rich, impulsive and destructive, bittersweet and silky-warm.

So utterly, inevitably lovable.

Kiyoomi thinks it’s time he stops running away from this. “I love you, Atsumu.”

“What?” Atsumu’s eyes flash open with shock, and he growls when the hair dye drips into his eyes. “Omi, ya can’t say that when I can’t look atcha – _rinse it – my eyes are burning–”_

Kiyoomi laughs with embarrassment while he holds the water onto Atsumu’s fingers violently rubbing his eyelids, and then Atsumu opens his bloodshot eyes, squinting at him with incredulousness. “Didja say that right then so that I couldn’t look?”

It feels right. It feels like a weight unloaded from his chest, to say this out loud, and now Kiyoomi doesn’t want to stop saying it. He didn’t know he’s been holding back from this, but now that it’s unlocked, everything streams freely into and out of him as a gentle river carrying colorful petals.

Kiyoomi purses his lips, suppressing a smile but he’s relieved. He’s happy. He’s _happy._ “And what if I did?”

Atsumu steps forward, cornering him between the wall and the shower door, a loving and threatening smile on his face. “Then I’mma kiss ya until ya can’t think of such smart things.”

Kiyoomi laughs again, but he’s muted when Atsumu’s warm lips crash onto his.

✵

“Omi-omi,” Atsumu says, turning to him in the locker room while Kiyoomi pulls the jersey over his head.

“Hmm?”

“It’s because yer here,” Atsumu announces, not flinching away from the eye contact at all.

Kiyoomi furrows his brows in confusion. They are seconds away from the Adlers match, and he flattens out the jersey over his shoulders. “What?”

“It’s home because yer here,” Atsumu clarifies, standing tall and proud in front of him, demanding Kiyoomi’s attention. As if he ever lost it.

Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to reply to that other than the sharp breath he takes in, though something in his chest threatens to break and flood his being as a whole. He bites his lip, mouth curled downwards with all the emotions and his heart breaking at the acceptance, the love, the belonging. Atsumu still looks at him, an adoring glint dancing in the golden stare, a smile widening on his face. Sincere, beautiful, golden. So lovable.

“Let’s play,” he says through the curl of his lips.

“Let’s play,” Kiyoomi replies softly.

✵

When the MSBY Black Jackals and Schweiden Adlers step onto the court, there are four rings. Two of them match from the opposing teams; one glistening on the finger of the Adlers’ setter, who watches intently the flashing redhead dancing around with utmost speed and control on the opposite side of the court, wearing a matching ring.

Other two are tucked under the black jerseys with claw marks on them, hanging from silver chains from their necks, placed there in an afternoon of beer, chips and love.

Atsumu smiles at Kiyoomi, bearing the sunset in one expression. Kiyoomi smiles back, feeling the sunshine bathing him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!  
> thank you for my wonderful friends, babies, queens (what i mean is betas): sabine, jenna, marie. this wouldn't make it if it weren't for your endless yelling. thank you.  
> any comments are so very appreciated! 
> 
> my links, if you want to reach me/support me/just look and go "huh":
> 
> [my carrd](https://berf.carrd.co/)  
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/berfin)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mamabrainrot)


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